Hawaii - Big Island

Spending a lot of time in the car as we did on both the Big Island of Hawaii and on Maui, we found a lot of different types of music can be found in Hawaii. Most of it is traditional Hawaiian music - ukulele or slack-key guitar-based music with words in the native Hawaiian language. But we did find one station - KLHI, also known as Native 92.5 - that introduced us to a new style of music that we certainly weren't familiar with - Contemporary Hawaiian. I'm not talking about traditional Hawaiian music by Don Ho or by Israel "Iz" Kamakawiwoʻole,but new age Hawaiian by groups and artists such as Rebel Souljahz, Rushouze and Amy Hanailai'i Gilliom.

FM radio stations don't cover as much ground as AM stations, mainly because their broadcast radius is determined by the height of the antenna and how much power they use to transmit. Their signal is categorized as "line of sight", meaning that if you have clear access to the tower and the broadcast signal is strong enough, you should be able to get the station. KLHI transmitted from a hillside on the southwest side of Maui, not far from where we stayed in Wailea. We were able to pick it up pretty well on the Big Island, especially if we stayed on the northwest side of the island. However, once we got up into the hills around Waimea the signal would rapidly diminish. Even on the east side of Maui, we would have trouble getting the station in because of the high terrain between us and the station.

We found ourselves sort of getting sucked in by this Hawaiian Contemporary Music that Native 92.5 played. The musical stylings feature strong elements of reggae. And they even had a name for this style of music - "Jawaiian" - because it closely resembled Jamaican music structures. But in this style of music we also heard bits of soul, hip-hop, jazz and even Mexican Tejano. There was a strong brass element in many of the songs with trumpets covering many background fills. But the key to songs were the strong harmonies on nearly every tune. Hawaiians have some great voices.

The music was infectious, but not overpowering. It was the type of music that you'd suddenly sort of start to bob your head to the beat. We heard some religious songs, but not many. We also heard some political songs, such as "The Warrior" by the Polynesian artist Fiji where he sang about the civil rights abuses that still exist in parts of that region on earth. But for the most part, many of the songs were either original songs by Hawaiian artists, or reworked 70's and 80's soft-rock songs that were given a native Hawaiian signature. A number of artists used the vocal effect known as "auto-effect" such as was used in Cher's 1990's hit, "Believe". Native 92.5 would rotate 25 to 30 songs on a daily basis. To see the current song list of what they're playing, click here.

Contemporary Hawaiian Music is relaxing and not taxing like some music can be. Reggae can be sort of tedious and monotonous, but I didn't really find anything repetitive about "Jawaiian" music. Some of the better artists we heard on Native 92.5 included The Green (formerly Next Generation), Sean Na'auao, B.U.B.Z., Ooklah the Moc and Inik (pronounced E-nick). Of course, the station also featured true reggae artists such as Bob Marley, his son, Ziggy Marley, Third World and Jimmy Cliff. They even played music from the innovative Jewish/Reggae artist Matisyahu. There was really nothing better than cruising down a seaside highway with Native 92.5 cranked up in the car. It brought the whole Hawaiian culture that much closer to what we were trying to experience.

You can get Native 92.5 on your computer and I suggest you give it a try. Click on this link - Native 92.5 Listen Live - and it will take you to a front page. If you have a high-speed connection, click on the 64K button. If you don't have one already, you'll have to do a quick download of an Abacast plug-in player for you computer, but it's safe and quick. It's worth the minimal effort to listen to some great music from the Hawaiian islands.

There's not much that we could bring back from Hawaii that really helped capture the essence of what life out there was all about. But closing my eyes and listening to Contemporary Hawaiian Music on Native 92.5 gives me that soothing sense of a Hawaiian lifestyle that we enjoyed for a couple weeks during our visit.

Chef Peter Merriman's signature restaurant - Merriman's in Waimea, HI - may have been the first place in Hawaii to address the concept of Hawaiian Regional Cuisine. When it opened in 1988, Merriman concept was to use home-grown, organic foods found on the islands, along with grass-fed beef from the ranches around Waimea, and to incorporate only the freshest caught fish into his daily menu. For over 20 years, Merriman's has been popular with tourists and locals alike seeking the finest in Hawaiian Regional Cuisine - a cuisine that didn't really exist 25 years ago.

For years and years, the term "Hawaiian food" meant the stuff tourists got a traditional lu'au - kalua pork, lomilomi salmon (grilled salmon with onions and tomatoes), chicken lu'au (chicken with spinach, onion and garlic), and, of course, poi, which is basically the paste from pounded taro roots. When Merriman arrived in 1983 to be the chef at the Mauna Lani Resort, he found the island had a bountiful harvest of food to choose from. He found ultra sweet corn that was grown by farmers on the east side of the Big Island, there were coconut trees near the hotel that he would climb to get coconuts for a special coconut sauce he used on fish, and he began a relationship with a number of organic farmers and growers on the island.

Merriman and his wife, Vicki, opened Merriman's with the idea of fusing all these great home-grown foods into a menu that showed off the best of what Hawaii had to offer. In the meantime, he used his relationship with the ranchers, farmers and fishermen to ask them to try different types of things to grow and catch. This led to different types of fruits and vegetables, as well as interesting and new species of fresh fish to show up on his menu. Merriman's suddenly became a gourmet heaven with the burgeoning "foodie" population.

After our lunch at Merriman's Market Cafe, not far from our hotel, I did a little research into Merriman's place in Waimea. As I said in my earlier post on his cafe in the Kings' Shops shopping center in Waikoloa Beach, Merriman also has a handful of other restaurants that he's involved in, including a Merriman's on both Maui and on the island of Kauai. It sounded like the Merriman's on Maui was an exquisitely upscale restaurant from some of the things we were reading about. But the one in Waimea could be described as upscale casual. On our last night on the Big Island we decided to go to Waimea for a good dinner at Merriman's.

I had a pair of shorts and a Hawaiian shirt on that evening, Cindy had a nice top and chinos when we went out. It was warm when we left the hotel, temps were in the upper 70's, but we knew up in Waimea it would be cold and rainy. It was. The temperature dropped 20 degrees and there was a light rain by the time we pulled into the restaurants parking lot on the west end of town (see map).

The decor of Merriman's is contemporary Hawaiian - it has a high ceiling with narrow wood beams across the room. There was subdued lighting along the edges of the ceiling, with dimly lit chandeliers hanging toward the middle of the room - bright enough to allow you to easily read the menu. Small palm trees in large pots were interspersed in the dining room that sat about 80 people. The tables and booths along the walls were all adorned with heavy linen table cloths. It was a nice place to say the least.

It was about 7:30 when we got there and there was one table open - a large six-seater near the open kitchen and the small bar area. Actually, I can't even really call it a bar as much as it was a station where the bartender mixed drinks and put them on a five foot long pick-up bar. The hostess took us to the table and while it was large for two people. It was either that, or the hostess said it would be about a 20 minute wait for a regular table. Cindy thought it would be fine, so we sat there and she gave us the menus for that evening.

We were told that Peter Merriman doesn't work all that much at the restaurant any longer, he's running the small empire of restaurants from his home on Maui. The executive chef of Merriman's in Waimea is Neil Murphy (right) who has a long resume of working in fine restaurants before he joined the Merriman's staff. Prior to coming to Hawaii to be the chef at Merriman's, Murphy worked at a number of high-end New York City restaurants including Aureole and Symphony Cafe. He was the chef de cuisine at the famed Park Avenue Cafefor eight years before coming to the Big Island.

Our waitress - wait a minute - *waiter* for the evening came out to great us. Her name was Robyn and she was a short blond, 20-something gal who grew up in Alaska. As we found out later on, Robyn had a degree in forestry, but decided to come to Hawaii to just bum around for awhile a few years ago. One thing led to another and she ended up as a waiter at Merriman's. All the waiters - both men and women - are called just that. Each was dressed snappy in black trousers covered with heavy aprons, white button down shirts with ties. In fact, each of them were given the title of "Professional Waiter", as it showed on the business card Robyn gave me before we left that evening. I'd never had a waiter or waitress give me a business card before.

I looked thorough the impressive wine list Merriman's had to offer. Robyn said apologized about the shortness of wine list - the book was ten pages. "I know our wine list isn't as extensive as other places," she said. "But we have a great sommelier here and he can give you some recommendations on some of the wine."

I told her, "I don't think that would be necessary, but you shouldn't sell this wine list short. Compared to some other fine restaurants I've been to, this is pretty impressive." Since we were in the middle of ranching country on the Big Island, I figured I get a steak that evening. Cindy was, no doubt, going to get seafood, but she said she wanted to go with a red wine for the evening. I ended up picking out the Castillo Labistada Rioja Reserva, a 2001 varietal from Spain. Actually, the prices on their wine list were pretty reasonable. A 2005 Jordan Cabernet was $99 bucks - I've paid up to $120 for that on the mainland. They also had a Whitehall Lane 2005 cab for $89. But the Castillo Rioja was a little over-priced at $64 bucks. But I like a good Rioja and the Rioja Reservas are aged for three years in oak barrels compared to just one year for regular riojas.

The menuat Merriman's is eclectic, to say the least. While there's not a lot to choose on it, there's a lot of diverse and interesting items to choose from. As I said, Merriman's features grass-fed Hawaiian-raised beef, fresh fish from the ocean, and organically homegrown, and when possible - chemical free - vegetables and fruits. They have an interesting list of appetizers including a kalua pig and sweet Hawaiian onion quesadilla; macadamia encrusted grilled shrimp; and their house cured smoked bacon served with sweet bread French toast with a Kona coffee barbecue sauce. How wild is that!

For dinner, as I said, I was looking for some grass-fed beef and they had a few things to offer including a filet; a bone-in New York strip with Szechuan pepper sauce and herb butter, and their version of Steak Diane with sauteed Hamakua mushrooms. Man, it all sounded good.

Cindy, of course, was looking at their seafood offerings which included Merriman's original wok charred Ahi tuna - charred on the outside, but rare inside. I almost jumped at that, honestly. They also had a prepared Ono fish, as well as a ponzu (a fruity sauce found primarily in Japanese cuisine) marinated mahi mahi that was sauteed with sesame seasoned shiitake mushrooms, hearts of palm and sweet Maui onions. That sounded great, too.

What I should have done is ordered Merriman's Mixed Plate - a small tenderloin medallion with the mahi mahi and the ahi tuna. But Cindy beat me to it. I was sort of surprised that she went with that as she had been disdaining beef all week long during our first few days on the Big Island. But Robyn said, "Oh, you'll like that."

Cindy smiled and said, "Oh, I know!"

What I ended up getting was the large (12 oz) grass-fed beef tenderloin filet with a tomato, sweet onion and beet chutney on the side. However, before that I ordered Merriman's tomato salad with fresh basil, blue cheese, anchovy, capers, lime and olive oil. As good as the tomatoes were on the burger I had previously at Merriman's Market Cafe, I could only imagine how good this salad would be.

I said, "Cindy, that has mushrooms with the fish."

She said, "That's OK, I'll just put 'em off to the side and let you have them."

For her starter, Cindy got the Hawaiian grown lettuce salad with Maui sweet onions in a house-made balsamic vinaigrette. She thought about getting the Caesar salad, but opted to go with the basic salad instead.

And just as I hoped it would be, the tomato salad was out of this world. I don't know if it's the soil on top of volcanic rock or the long growing season or what, but Hawaiian tomatoes were absolutely the best I've ever had. I grow some pretty good tasting tomatoes back home, but these were just unbelievable in their taste. They didn't have that overly acidic taste that some tomatoes can have. They're almost sweet and very juicy. If the state agriculture department didn't scan bags and suitcases for vegetables and fruits, I would have smuggled home a dozen or so. Along with the fresh anchovies, blue cheese and the fresh basil - which is grown outside of Merriman's in their own herb garden - it was a taste explosion in my mouth. It was just unbelievable.

Robyn and another waiter brought out our main entrees later in the evening, setting them in front of us at the same time. I had ordered my filet rare and it was a little over-cooked. Actually, it would have been a little over-cooked as a medium-rare. But it was tender and juicy. Grass-fed beef doesn't have the same taste as the corn-fed beef I'm accustomed to back in Iowa. But as Cindy pointed out, they probably aren't injecting the cows on steroids or whatever out in Hawaii. Still, it was pretty good.

However, Cindy's mahi mahi, wok charred ahi and the filet medallion was "the bomb". She gave me little bites of the fish and it was just heavenly. She said, "Honey, this is just unbelievable. I'm so spoiled on fish here in Hawaii I don't know how I'm going to be able to eat fish when we get back home."

The Castillo Rioja Reserva was a great complement to the meal. I love a good Rioja and the Castillo was a pleasant surprise. It wasn't overpowering or bold, but had a nice finish that lingered for a moment. It went well with the seafood, as well.

As we finished up our meal, Robyn came around to see if we wanted dessert. When she talked about the passion fruit mousse, I asked, "Is that the same thing as lilikoi?"

She said, "Passion fruit is from the same family as lilikoi, very similar, but not as tart."

We were sort of full from dinner, but I decided to give the passion fruit mousse a try. Shortbread macadamia nut cookies came on the side. I was sort of "eh" when it came to macadamia nuts before I got to Hawaii. However, we found some in a can - the Mauna Loa brand of macadamia nuts - and I was hooked. But, oh! Macadamia nuts are so rich! I could only eat a handful before my stomach would say, "Whoa, hang on there!" (We brought four cases of six cans of the Mauna Loa brand macadamia nuts back home with us.)

The passion fruit mousse was light and not as tart as the lilikoi as she said. It was very good. And the shortbread macadamia cookies were killer. I said, "Cindy, we need to find the recipe for these cookies." (We did - see it here. We haven't made them yet, but I want to wait for a special occasion.)

The crowd had filtered out by the time we were finishing up, so that afforded Robyn some time to visit with us. She asked how dinner was and I told her that we've had some outstanding meals with great service on our visit to the Big Island and this was no exception. I said, "My steak was a little over-cooked, however."

She said, "Well, why didn't you say something? I would have gotten you a new steak."

I told her it was more medium-rare-medium than rare-medium as I usually like my steaks. "It was no big deal," I said. "I wasn't going to quibble over meat temperature tonight." She apologized again and said, "Well, next time you guys come back, I'll give you free desserts." (What is it with these places giving out free desserts? I know tourism is down in Hawaii, but that was the second high end restaurant that offered to pick up our dessert if we came back.)

Cindy said, "Unfortunately, this is our last night on this island. We're going to Maui tomorrow."

Robyn took out her card, put "Free desserts w/purchase of entrees" on the back of it and handed it to me. "If someday you ever make it back to the Big Island, please do stop in and see us again."

Yes, if we ever do make it out to the Big Island again, we will stop at Merriman's. It was expensive, but we have a tendency to splurge on vacation. I don't know if it was the finest meal we had while on the Big Island, but it was very, very good.

The last full day we were on the Big Island of Hawaii, we took a road trip up to the northern part of the island to scout for places to take pictures later in the evening of the full moon rising out of the ocean. However, much of the north and northeastern part of the island was shrouded in clouds that were producing some heavy rains along with some strong winds. It's amazing that we could drive about 10 miles north of our hotel along the coast and the temperature would drop and it began to rain. All the while we could look in the rearview mirror and see sunshine behind us.

We eventually ended up in Waimea and went to a place that we'd read about in some travel books - Tako Taco. Actually, we'd read in a couple books that Tako Taco had closed, but a couple others said that it had re-opened. I figured a Mexican food place in Hawaii ought to have some righteous fish tacos, so we decided to give it a shot.

From what I could gather from doing some research on Tako Taco was that it was originally a small taco shop in Waimea that offered what would be called "Hawaiianized Mexican Food". Actually, their food was a fusion of Mexican, Island and Asian cuisine. A lot of travel books we had read on the old place raved about the inventive nature of their Mexican food.

Tako Taco opened around 2002 and moved to their present day location in 2007 (see map). But they soon went out of business - much to the dismay of locals and tourists, alike. That's when Tom Kerns, a former brewmaster from Oregon, came into the picture.

Kerns' (pictured right) career in the restaurant business began when he worked at McNemamins, a chain of brewpubs in the Pacific Northwest. Kerns eventually landed in the Phillipines where he helped open a brewpub there. Liking the south Pacific lifestyle, Kerns came to Hawaii and opened up the Fish and Game Brewing Company on the island of Maui about 11 years ago. It quickly became one of the more popular destinations for food and beer in the Lahaina area.

Kerns also became a hero to many beer enthusiasts on the Hawaiian Islands when he drafted legislation that would allow brewpubs to sell growler containers (one gallon jugs of beer) and kegs directly to their customers. We noticed a small shack directly outside the Kona Brewing Company that was selling growlers to people when we were there earlier on our visit.

Eventually, the Maui Brewing Company was looking for a brewpub/restaurant to feature their beer and they bought out Kerns and turned the Fish and Game Brewing Company in the Maui Brewing Co. brewpub. Kerns "retired" with his wife to the highlands around Waimea looking for his next opportunity. His goal was to open another brewpub and looked at a number of places around his home in Waimea for a place to do so.

When Tako Taco went out of business, the wheels began to turn for Kerns and his wife, Jayne. The Kerns bought the building and resurrected the old cantina style restaurant with an eye on serving the same style of healthy Mexican/Island food, along with serving some of his own beers. The Kerns bought what was an old motorcycle shop behind the Tako Taco building and began to put brewing equipment in the building. The capacity of brewing in the building isn't huge - their 10 barrel system will brew about 500 barrels of beer annually. But Kerns hopes to grow that part of the business in the future.

Kerns image of taking Tako Taco and turning it into a brewpub came to fruition in August of 2008. However, the signage is sort of confusing as it's both called Tako Taco and also Big Island Brewhaus. Turns out the official name of the place is Tako Taco Taqueria Big Island Brewhaus. Sort of wordy for name of a resturant, don't you think? Either way, the place is open and they offer pretty much the same menu as the old Tako Taco and a number of different in-house brewed beers.

Actually, we tried to get into Tako Taco earlier in the afternoon, but there was no place to park in the rather small parking lot. Given that it was raining, we didn't want to park the car across the road and walk to the restaurant. We decided to drive around for a bit and then come back. When we did get back just after 2 p.m. there was a place to park.

The outside of the building features a bamboo fence that houses a beer garden the Kerns built to help give the restaurant sort of a neighborhood brewpub feel. But walking into the restaurant, it was far from a brewpub atmosphere. It was like they had taken a Mexican cantina and dropped it in the middle of the Pacific. There were a number of tables and chairs all through the place, a small bar upfront with a multitude of beers on tap - not only their own beers, but beers from the Kona Brewery, Stella Artois and Heinekin. For some reason, Heinekin is big in Hawaii. It's sort of an island staple like Spam.

We took a seat at a table near the front counter. Above the counter is the menu for the place (click on the picture for a closer look at their menu). It's not an extensive menu, but it offered a lot of different variations of Island-Mex food. We didn't know if there was waitress service, so we sort of sat there for a moment. Finally a girl behind the counter said, "You have to order up here." Oh, OK. That's fine.

We weren't overly hungry, even though it had been nearly five hours since we'd had breakfast. I really just wanted to try some of their fish tacos. Their fish tacos are fresh catch, usually ono, spearfish or some other light white fish. They came with cabbage on the side and a homemade black bean salsa on the top. I ordered a couple of those.

Cindy always loves chile rellenos, so she ordered one of those. She also wanted some chips and salsa, but unlike most Mexican restaurants on the mainland, Tako Taco charges for their homemade ships and salsa. But that was OK - the chips were very good and very fresh, while the red and green salsas they provided were excellent as well. Both had a hint of heat to them, the green more so than the red.

For drinks, something caught my eye - lilikoi margaritas. Instead of the regular margarita mix, Tako Taco uses lilikoi juice in this variation of the margarita. Since lilikoi was like heroin to me, I had to try one. Cindy follwed suit and ordered one, as well.

And the margaritas were out of this world. I don't know what it is about the taste of lilikoi, but I was absolutely hooked on it. I quickly down my margarita and went back up to order another one. By that time, our food was brought out to our table.

While the tacos weren't overly huge, there was a lot of grilled fish on the double corn tortillas. The cabbage was fresh and went well with the fish. What grabbed my attention was the black bean salsa they put on the fish. Man, it had a spicy peppery taste to it. It almost overpowered the taste of the fish, but it had a really good spicy finish on the tongue. About the time I really needed to take a drink, the girl behind the counter came out with my second lilikoi margarita. The combination of the lilikoi and the spicy black bean salsa was a taste sensation like no other I'd ever had.

Cindy was sort of confused with her chile relleno. Unlike most chile rellenos she's had in the past, it didn't come with a tomato-based sauce on the top. There was chopped lettuce topped with a mild salsa served on the side. She just used some of the red salsa that was provided for our chips. She seemed to like the chile relleno calling it "different".

Between the chips and salsa, the two lilikoi margaritas and the two fish tacos, I was pretty stuffed. I got up to look around the place and I noticed an autographed picture of Elton John on the wall. Turns out he had eaten at Tako Taco at some point in time. I don't know if it was during the current incarnation of the restaurant or if it was back during the previous owner's tenure. Either way, I thought it was sort of ironic that I had eaten in at least two places that Elton John has eaten at before, the other being Raja in Atlanta.

I don't know if the food at Tako Tako was really good or if it was just really different as compared to the usual Mexican food we get back on the mainland. The fish tacos were good, but not overly outstanding. Cindy said her chili relleno was good, but she's had better. The lilikoi margaritas were outstanding - I wish I could find lilikoi juice on the mainland. And the homemade chips and salsa was above average. I liked the atmosphere of the place, but I thought the people working there were a little distant. Overall, it was a good experience at Tako Taco. I don't know if I'd go back there for the food, but I'd crawl back there for the lilikoi margaritas.

(Update - Since our trip to Tako Taco, Kerns has opened his brewpub - Big Island Brewhaus - that also serves the same Mexican food.)

Staying at an all-inclusive resort has never appealed to us. We like to explore the areas where we stay, and that usually means looking for good restaurants. We've heard reports from friends who have stayed at all-inclusive places and we've all heard the food isn't bad, but it's not great. It's generally sanitized and dumbed-down for the tourists. While our hotel - the Hilton Waikoloa Village - wasn't an all-inclusive resort, it did feature a number of restaurants to choose from. We were sort of thinking that we should spend some bucks in at least one restaurant for dinner during out stay there and we chose the Kamuela Provision Company.

Actually, we almost didn't go to the Kamuela Provision Company. We really didn't know about it until we stumbled upon the place during a walk around the property at the resort one afternoon. It was situated about as far from our room as you could get at the Hilton Waikoloa Village. We were walking around the pool at the Lagoon tower and we sort of stumbled into it along a path that traced the rocky, black lava cliff that jutted out into the Pacific. It had a wonderful little patio that looked out onto the sea and the sound of waves crashing up against the rocks gave it a great tropical sea feeling. And it was a popular place for dinner when the sun would set into the sea. We stopped to look at one of their menus they had posted by the front of the restaurant and it featured primarily steaks and seafood. Cindy said, "Well, this place certainly looks interesting."

We had been thinking of going to an Italian restaurant at the Hilton that we'd heard about - Donatoni's. The restaurant wasn't far from our room in the Ocean tower, but we noticed that there was a two-sided sign out in front of the restaurant. On one side it said, "Donatoni's", but you could spin it around and it said, "Bella Vista". One day the sign would say, "Donatoni's", but later in the day or the next day, we'd see "Bella Vista" on the sign. We were sort of confused about that. But we'd read so many good things about Donatoni's that we really wanted to give it a try. But once Cindy saw the Kamuela Provision Company, her choices of hotel restaurants began to waver.

After a long day of doing nothing - the perfect type of day for me on a vacation - we decided to hit the Malolo Lounge for a couple drinks before dinner. Our favorite waitress, April, was asking us what we were going to do for dinner that evening. I said, "I think we're gonna try Donatoni's for some Italian tonight."

She sort of stopped and said, "Oh! Donatoni's is closed."

Cindy said, "Closed?!"

April said that it had been closed for about a year. "Their lease ran out with the hotel," she explained. "That space is now used for like private parties and private dinners, primarily for the weddings that we have here."

I said, "Oh, that explains the double-sided sign that said 'Donatoni's' on one side and 'Bella Vista' on the other."

April said, "Yeah, I don't quite understand why they do that or why they even have 'Donatoni's' still on the sign."

Cindy turned to me and said, "Good! Then we can go to the Provision Company for dinner."

April replied, "The Kamuela Provision Company here on the property? Oh, that's really good." And she smiled and said, "And it's really romantic." Cindy was hooked.

We asked April if we needed reservations and she told us that there wasn't a lot of people staying at the Hilton, so we probably didn't need to worry about that. We had noticed that all week long that it appeared there wasn't a lot of people staying there the week we were there. April said, "I think our occupancy rate has been way down because we've been slow here in the lounge all week long. But it's supposed to get busy starting this weekend."

(Clayton Homes out of Tennessee - which is also a Berkshire-Hathaway company - was scheduled to begin a convention of sales managers the next week and each sales manager could bring their family with them. A lot of them were coming in on Friday and Saturday. I think they brought something like 800 people.)

April said that the Kamuela Provision Company is usually packed with diners on the patio right about sunset. "But if you want to wait and eat later, you should be able to get right in."

We went back to our room to freshened up and change clothes and we took a leisurely walk through the lush tropical grounds of the hotel over to the Kamuela Provision Company, stopping to watch the sunset dive into the ocean. Hawaiian sunsets are just spectacular.

We checked in at the hostess stand and she asked if we wanted to eat inside or out. Cindy wanted to eat outside and the hostess said we'd have about a 15 to 20 minute wait. We sat at the bar and Cindy got a glass of white wine while I enjoyed a couple of - you guessed it - Kona Big Wave Golden Ales.

It wasn't quite 20 minutes when the hostess came and got us at the bar. The dining room at the Kamuela Provision Company was sort of cozy, but the two main rooms weren't small. The lights were subdued and the motif was sort of a high-end tropical theme. But there was - maybe - four tables filled in the dining room. All the action was, indeed, outside on the patio.

We were seated outside at a table that looked out onto the ocean. The sky was becoming a deep violet with the last light of setting sun on the horizon and a bright moon rising above Mauna Kea to the east. We noticed there were about four tables for two people set up on what was the walkway that we had passed on our first journey past the Kamuela Provision Company. Even though it had an unobstructed view of the ocean, people could easily just walk past, just inches from their table. Cindy said, "God, I'm not certain I'd want to be sitting out there with people walking past all the time."

Turned out that not a lot of people were out walking along the point at that time of the evening. And only two fof the four tables along the walkway were occupied.

We were looking through our menuswhen our waiter for the evening, Oly, came to introduce himself. He was a personable young guy who was born in California to Samoan parents. He was a pretty well built guy and said that he was a pretty good football player in high school. "I had about a dozen scholarship offers to some big schools, but I blew out my knee in my second game of my senior season. I never played football again," he told us later that evening.

He said his father and mother had divorced when he was young. After high school he moved out to Hawaii to live with his dad and go to college. "College lasted about six months and I moved out on my own soon after that," he told us. "That was about 11 years ago. Now I have a wife and two beautiful daughters and I can't imagine doing anything else than what I'm doing right now." He certainly seemed to like his job.

We started off getting a bottle of the Grgich Hills Fume Blanc that was reasonably priced at around $55 bucks. We noticed wine prices in Hawaii were about 10 to 15 percent higher than what we'd see in restaurants on the mainland. But we sort of expected that when we were in Hawaii.

Oly came back to explain some things about the menu. He said all of the seafood was fresh catch, usually earlier that day. The steaks on the menu featured Hawaiian grass-fed beef, or they would fly fresh beef from the mainland and cut their own steaks two or three times a week. Their featured entree was an 8 oz. grilled beef tenderloin filet with tempura lobster. They had a number of appetizers and salads to choose from, as well.

He gave us the specials for that evening and one was a striped sea bass, caught fresh that morning, fileted and grilled in a butter sauce, then topped with sauteed butterfly shrimp and finished with a light cream sauce. Cindy perked up when she heard that. Buttermilk mashed potatoes came on the side. Or Oly said that we could substitute the side with any one of their signature sides they offered such as sweet potato hash, wilted spinach or edamame succotash. Cindy ordered the special with the buttermilk mashed potatoes.

I was sort of thinking either steak or seafood. I asked Oly, "What's the most popular seafood item on the menu?"

He didn't hesitate when he answered, "The KPC ocean platter." It featured the catch of the day, which was ono that evening, along with oysters, shrimp and scallops. And you had your choice for either grilled or fried seafood on the plate. He said, "Get it grilled and we put this house made remoulade sauce on top of everything. It's my favorite." I ordered that with a side of sweet hash potatoes.

A salad came with the dinner - Cindy got a small traditional Caesar salad, while I asked Oly if I could substitute my salad for the KPC tomato salad - locally grown heirloom tomatoes with sweet Hawaiian onions, topped with crumbled feta cheese and a white balsamic macadamia nut vinaigrette. He said there would be a slight up-charge, but I didn't care. Hawaii had some of the best tasting tomatoes I've ever had in my life.

And my tomato salad was excellent. There's something about the taste of tomatoes while we were in Hawaii that just set me off. They were juicy and flavorful, not acidic like tomatoes on the mainland can be. I really liked the white balsamic macadamia nut vinaigrette, as well. It was a great compliment to the tomatoes and sweet onion slices.

Cindy said her Caesar salad was very good, as well. The Caesar dressing was very good and definitely house made. The lettuce was crisp and crunchy, the way Cindy likes her salad greens.

While we waited for dinner, we noticed the tables had begun to turn over to new diners. A lot of the people who were there earlier for the sunset had begun to leave and a number of Japanese diners came to the patio deck to enjoy their dinner. The Hilton Waikoloa Village catered to Japanese tourists with signage and menus printed in both English and Japanese. We were suddenly a minority on the patio with Japanese diners, but that was no big deal at all. Cindy said, "Maybe Japanese people are like Europeans and like to eat later in the evening."

Oly brought our food out and I was sort of surprised with the size of the plate for the KPC ocean platter. It was larger than what I expected. The ono was grilled with a seasoning and butter sauce, and there were five large butterflied shrimp, about the same number of grilled oysters and about a half dozen medium sized grilled scallops on top with the cream sauce poured over all that. And it was just excellent. The ono was light and flavorful, and the cream sauce went very well with the seafood, especially when I squeezed some lemon juice on top of everything. The sweet potato hash was *OK*, but I was much more interested in the seafood.

Cindy's striped sea bass was also very good. We exchanged bites of our food and I think I liked her sea bass better than my ono. As we were eating, Cindy said, "God, Will, I don't know how I'm ever going to be able to eat seafood when we get back home. This is just so fresh and flavorful. We'll never get anything like this back in Iowa."

After we finished our meals, Oly came out to tempt us with dessert. He was talking about their coconut cream pie and I told him I didn't like coconut all that much. I love the smell of coconut, but not the taste. Cindy does like coconut and she was interested in that. He said, "Listen, I never really liked coconut either until I had this pie when I first started here about 8 years ago. Now it's my favorite."

He described a few other desserts and I stopped him when he was described their Hawaiian lilikoi cheesecake served with passion fruit. I said, "Ooooo... That sounds great. I really like lilikoi and anything that has lilikoi in it." We ordered that with two forks.

When Oly came out with the dessert he had the cheesecake - and a piece of the coconut cream pie. He said, "Look, I'm not gonna charge you guys for the coconut cream pie. I just want you to try it. If you don't like it, leave it and enjoy the cheesecake."

Well, I did try the coconut cream pie and it was very good. It didn't have the overpowering coconut taste that I've had in similar pies in the past. But I have to tell you - the Hawaiian lilikoi cheesecake was just outstanding. Oh my God! Lilikoi, to me, was fast becoming like heroin to a junkie. There's just something about the sweet fruity taste of lilikoi that sends me over the edge.

After we finished, Oly came back to the table to talk with us for a few minutes. I told him that the coconut cream pie was surprisingly good, but the Hawaiian lilikoi cheesecake was to die for. He told us, "Look, I know there are a lot of great places to eat around here, but I'd really like you folks to come back before you leave. Even if it's just for dessert. And dessert will be on me, my treat." He said he didn't work Sunday or Monday nights, so he said we could come back on the weekend and he'd take care of us. I couldn't pass up a chance at another piece of that Hawaiian lilikoi cheesecake.

Unfortunately, that Saturday was the tsunami warning and after the hotel let guests back on to the property none of the restaurants were open. They had a free buffet in one of the ballrooms to feed people who didn't want to leave the property to go get dinner. So we never went back to see Oly and get our free dessert.

The food at the Kamuela Provision Company was very good - surprisingly good for a hotel resort restaurant. Oly's service was very personable and efficient. He was a talker, but he knew when to let us enjoy our food and the surroundings. We were overly happy with our meal and Cindy said, "Geez, could you imagine if we'd gone to Donatoni's instead of this place? I'm glad Donatoni's was closed or we wouldn't have found out how good this place was."

We dawdled a bit after dinner, enjoying the waves crashing onto the rocks, easily visible from a nearly full moon coming up from behind us. Oly wasn't in any hurry to kick us out to turn the table, we had spent a lot of money with him and gave him a handsome tip for his service. And it was a great, relaxed and slow walk back to our room well across the resort property. Life couldn't get much better than that evening in Hawaii.

One day for lunch, we ventured over to the Kings' Shops shopping place near our hotel at the Waikoloa Beach Resort looking for a place to eat. We decided to try Merriman's Market Cafe, a casual restaurant that specializes in Mediterranean cuisine using locally grown produce and meat, and featuring freshly caught seafood.

Merriman's Market Cafe is part of a family of restaurants owned by restaurateur/chef Peter Merriman. Merriman arrived in Hawaii in the early 80's to become the executive chef at a resort on the Big Island of Hawaii. He quickly found that traditional Hawaiian food left a lot to be desired, considering most of the native food was found at traditional lu'aus. And it wasn't all that great. He began to experiment with innovative dishes that featured the bountiful harvest of what the island could produce, both on the land and from the sea. His combination of taste sensations from locally grown foods garnered him a following with burgeoning "foodies".

In 1988, Merriman (right) and his wife, Vicki, opened their first restaurant, Merriman's, in the middle of ranching country in Waimea. Merriman developed a relationship with local growers and ranchers to get the finest foods available for his restaurant. Merriman's quickly became a destination for tourists and locals who were looking for the best in Hawaiian regional food. It was one of the first gourmet restaurants on the Big Island.

In 1991, Merriman and 11 other Hawaii-based chefs got together to establish what is called Hawaiian Regional Cuisine. Instead of distorting Hawaiian cuisine with frozen, flown-in food from the mainland to appease the taste buds of tourists, Merriman and his fellow chefs combined to come up with recipes that featured the best of what Hawaii had to offer - from the soil, from the ranches and from the sea. Suddenly, Hawaii Regional Cuisine meant more than kalua pork and lomi salmon served buffet style at a lu'au. The concept has allowed these innovative chefs to make Hawaii not only a beach paradise destation, but a food destination, as well.

In the early 90's, Merriman teamed with the TS Restaurant group to open the Hula Grill on Maui. They opened a second Hula Grill in Honolulu after that. Merriman's Market Cafe opened in 2003. And in addition to his Merriman's restaurant on the Big Island, he also has Merriman's locations on Maui and Kauai.

Merriman's Market Cafe has a nice little dining room, but a spacious outdoor dining area with tables under large umbrella's that shade diners from the intense Kohala Coast sun that shines over 300 days a year. We took one of the last available tables outdoors when we went that one afternoon. Our hostess gave us our menus and a waiter was over quickly to take our drink orders.

The lunch menuat Merriman's Market Cafe isn't all that extensive, but it was interesting, nonetheless. The dinner menu is much more lengthy with pasta dishes, ribs, gourmet pizza, and grass-fed beef. They also feature nightly seafood and beef specials, along with a pretty good selection of tapas for appetizers.

At lunch, they also feature a couple of specials. One of the specials that day was a Greek salad topped with a freshly caught spearfish that is grilled in a Moroccan tagine-roasted marinade of garlic and ginger. That's what Cindy ordered.

I'd been sort of hankering for a good burger since we got on the island, but I soon found that good burger joints are really tough to find in Hawaii. Merriman's had a 1/2 pound Market Cafe cheese burger that was topped with white cheddar cheese. I went with that. The waiter asked me, "Would you like bacon and sauteed ali'i mushrooms on that?" I asked him what ali'i mushrooms were and he said they were a Hawaiian grown mushroom. He said, "They're really good grilled and put on top of the burger." How could I say no after that?

It was a great afternoon, nice and warm with a gentle breeze blowing through the outdoor seating area. I was enjoying a few cold Kona Big Wave Golden Ales while Cindy was sipping on a glass of one of their very dry white house wines. I should have found out what it was as she offered me a sip and it was very good.

Our food came out and I was surprised by the size of the burger and the amount of bacon and mushrooms they put on top. There was a large leaf of fresh lettuce and a large, juicy tomato under the fresh sourdough bun. My God, it may have been the best tomato I've ever tasted! Everything about the burger was just great. It was one of the finest gourmet burgers I've ever tasted.

Garlic and chive seasoned french fries came with the burger. I usually don't go for fries all that much, but these were too good to pass up. I was having an exceptional lunch at Merriman's Market Cafe.

Cindy's Greek salad with the grilled spearfish was also wonderful. She gave me a couple bites of her salad and fish in return for some french fries. The fish had a great taste to it, light and flaky. And the Greek salad dressing was so overly flavorful, yet not overpowering. We were having a great lunch.

After lunch, our waiter was trying to tempt us with treats from their dessert menu. Merriman's Market Cafe featured their own gelato cart just outside the outdoor seating area near the mall's promenade. Cindy wanted to try some gelato, but only if I'd help her eat some. I only wanted lemon gelato and it turned out they were out of the lemon flavor. We ended up passing on the dessert, although I do have to say the chocolate Grand Marnier creme brulee sounded pretty interesting.

But quite honestly, we had enough food to satiate us until dinner later that evening. Cindy loved her salad and my burger at Merriman's Market Cafe was outstanding. In fact, when we were talking to our favorite bar waitress back at the hotel, April, she told us she thought everything that Merriman's Market Cafe had to offer was wonderful - including the burger. "I think it's the best burger on the island," she told us after we'd been there. That was the only burger I had when I was on the Big Island and if that was the best in the eyes of a local, that was fine with me.

After our experience at Merriman's Market Cafe, we made a conscious effort to have dinner at Merriman's primary restaurant in Waimea. We did and look for our experience there in an upcoming Road Tips post very soon.

(Update - Although we probably would have never had the chance to go back to Merriman's Market Cafe, I'm still somewhat bummed to find out that it closed in 2014. I'll never forget the taste of the fresh tomato on the burger - a taste of a tomato that I may never find again.)

While on the Big Island, for dinner one evening we stayed close to the hotel and had a meal at Buzz's Sand Trap, a restaurant at the Beach Golf Course which is part of the Waikoloa Beach Resort. We had seen a sign for the place, but figured that it was not much more than a "19th Hole" bar and grill since it was part of the golf course. We soon found out it was far from that.

Buzz's Sand Trap opened in August of 2009 in what was the old Beach Grill restaurant. The owner, Richard "Dickie" Furtado, comes from a long family line of restaurant owners with restaurants on The Big Island, Maui and Oahu. Furtado's father, Dick, ran the famous Big Island restaurant Bobbie's Steak and Lobster that was on the waterfront in Hilo for years. Dick Furtado's daugther, Bobby Lou, opened Buzz's Original Steak House in 1959 on Oahu with her husband, Raymond "Buzz" Schnieder. Dickie Furtado's sister, Julie, also owned a restaurant. And he has a niece and nephew in the restaurant business, as well.

While attending the University of Hawaii, Dickie Furtado worked at Buzz's Original Steak House and decided to head to San Francisco to learn how to become a chef. Dickie Furtado eventually came back to Hawaii and opened three restaurants in Maui. He sold all three just after the turn of the century.

An opportunity arose to open a restaurant in the Waikoloa Beach Resort property and Dickie Furtado decided to capitalize on the popularity and longevity of the "Buzz's" name by naming his new restaurant Buzz's Sand Trap. The restaurant specializes in kiawe (sort of a Hawaiian mesquite) wood-grilled meats and seafood. Although it does have some of the same specialties from Buzz's Original Steak House, Dickie Furtado has a number of his own recipes for Buzz's Sand Trap.

Buzz's Sand Trap was highly recommended by our favorite concierge at the Hilton Waikoloa Village, Rick. I'm tellin' ya - the guy never steered us in a wrong direction when it came to restaurants. He told us that Buzz's Sand Trap was "literally just over there," pointing just to the south and east of the property. Rick said it was walking distance, but a little bit of a hike. We thought we'd just drive over to the place since we really didn't know where we were going. It turned out that Rick was right - it was an easy walk from the Hilton (see map). Buzz's Sand Trap is part of the clubhouse at the Beach Golf Course at the Waikoloa Beach Resort and it has a spacious parking lot.

We got into the place around 7:30 and the hostess met us at her stand just outside the door. She asked if we had reservations and I asked back, "Do we need them?" (That's a minor pet-peeve of mine when it comes to restaurants. I know that their first instinct is to ask if a patron has a reservation if they have some on their books. But why can't they ask, "Two for dinner? Do you have a reservation?") She said we didn't and she went inside to check what sort of seating we could get. She came back and took us past the small bar area up front to a table over in a corner of the restaurant near the front of the dining area and gave us our menus. The restaurant was about 1/3 full.

Buzz's Sand Trap opens at 3:30 each day for happy hour. They feature a number of "pupu's" - the Hawaiian term for appetizer - including hot or cold artichoke hearts, escargot and ahi tuna ceviche (a lime-juice marinated tuna that cooks in the citric acid of the juice). Buzz's Sand Trap also has a short list of beers and wines to choose from, as well as just about any drink you want to order.

The entree menu at Buzz's Sand Trap isn't all that extensive, but it did have some interesting choices. Of course, they had steaks and seafood, but they also featured lobster, rack of lamb, and baby back ribs. They had a light meal menu - the "short course" - that featured clams and meatloaf.

Our waiter came over to let us know the "catch of the day" was mahi mahi and they prepare it three different ways - poached Oriental style with garlic, ginger sauce, green onions and peanut oil; dredged in a panko flour and sauteed; or grilled over kiawe wood. I don't know if Cindy heard him say anything after that. She was getting the kiawe grilled mahi mahi.

I was sort of torn as to what to get. I kept hearing these great stories about the grass-fed ranch beef they grew on the Big Island. And Buzz's Sand Trap featured a ribeye, a strip steak and a tenderloin filet on their menu. And you could get your choice of sauces to go with them, if you want. One sauce was called "Sinatra Style" - a favorite of Frank Sinatra's when he would visit Buzz's Original Steak House on Oahu. It was olive oil, lemon juice, parsley, capers and chopped garlic. It sounded interesting. They also had a peppercorn sauce that was Worcestershire sauce, cognac and whole peppercorns. I'm a sucker for a good peppercorn sauce.

But something caught my eye - the kiawe-grilled rosemary garlic encrusted bone-in pork chop. I don't get to eat pork that much at home - Cindy has some sort of weird thing about grilled pork at home - so I like to get it when we go out to eat. The rosemary encrusted pork chop sounded good for me.

With our meals, we had our choice of soup or Buzz's Sand Trap's salad bar. With her kiawe grilled mahi mahi, Cindy got a bowl of the Portuguese vegetable bean soup. I went with the salad bar. We also decided to get a bottle of the Parducci sauvignon blanc. I got a Big Wave Golden Ale to start off (I'd had a couple mai tai's and a couple beers back at the hotel before we came over).

Our waiter brought out Cindy's soup and she offered me a bite. It was basically a vegetable soup with black beans. And it was pretty tasty. I finished up my beer as the waiter finally brought the bottle of wine to the table. I waited for him to open it before I went to the salad bar. Buzz's Sand Trap's salad bar wasn't overly big, but it did have enough different items to choose from to make a good sized salad plate. One of the homemade dressing choices they had was their Hawaiian dressing - a lilikoi-infused French dressing that was very, very good.

The atmosphere at Buzz's Sand Trap was very relaxed, let sort of elegant. The dress code was not overly casual - you still needed to wear a collared shirt to be seated. But it didn't seem stuffy in the least. The lighting was subdued and conversations didn't carry in the dining area. It was a pretty romantic place, actually.

We did notice, however, that the service was a little spotty. Our waiter was distracted a couple times and didn't get our bottle of wine to our table very quickly. I was just finishing up my salad when our entrees came out. And Cindy needed something after our dinner was served, but we couldn't find our waiter. I don't care for waiters or waitresses who don't check back within five to ten minutes after you've been served. Sometimes they come too soon to ask how the food is and you haven't even taken a bite.

When my plate was placed in front of me, I was surprised to see not one rosemary garlic encrusted pork chops, but TWO! I thought, "How can I finish both of these?" But from the first bite I made up my mind that I was going to give it the old college try. The pork chops were moist and not overcooked. The rosemary was a little overpowering as I really couldn't taste much garlic on the meat. But the kiawe-mesquite flavor was very good. On the side I had a pile of garlic-mashed potatoes and a stir-fried vegetable medley. I had a couple bites of the garlic-mashed potatoes and they were very good. Not as full of garlic that I like, but they were still very good.

Cindy offered me a bite of her grilled mahi mahi. It was very light and flaky, cooked medium-rare and had that good kiawe flavor to it. I liked it very much, as did Cindy. She got a side of steamed cauliflower, broccoli and snow peas along with her meal.

We were enjoying our dinner when another couple was seated at the table next to us. They were looking through the menu and shaking their head somewhat disapprovingly of what they were finding. When our waiter - who was their waiter - came to greet them, the lady asked, "Is this the same as the Buzz's Steak House in Honolulu?"

The waiter said this place was owned by the brother of the owner of Buzz's Steak House, but that was really the only affiliation. The waiter stepped away - not coming to our table, of course - and suddenly the couple fell into a heavy discussion. Suddenly, they both stood up, placed the their napkins on the table and left. I looked at the menu for Buzz's Steak House on line afterward and it didn't seem to be much larger - all that different, for that matter - than Buzz's Sand Trap. But they left anyway.

And, quite honestly, it was their loss. I thought the food at Buzz's Sand Trap was very good. I liked the pork chops and was able to finish the bulk of the meat on the bones. Cindy's mahi mahi was cooked wonderfully and she enjoyed them immensely. Other than the spotty service (the waiter didn't even ask us if we wanted dessert), the whole experience was pretty enjoyable. Rick the concierge had told us that the prices were pretty good at Buzz's Sand Trap and he was spot on with that, as well. It was a lot of food for the money we paid, quite possibly one of the best bargains while we were in Hawaii. Buzz's Sand Trap was a good place to get a meal at a good price on the Big Island.

Ever since I was a little kid, I had some sort of a weird hankering to go to Hilo, HI. I don't know why. I always had some sort of a wanderlust even as a little kid. I used to look through atlas's and encyclopedias and for some reason Hilo always fascinated me. We were on the Big Island and up in Waimea, so we decided to head further down the road to Hilo along State Highway 19, also known as the Hawaii Belt Road.

As I said in my original post about the Big Island (click here to see that entry), you can find 11 of the 13 microclimates found on Earth on the island. Just east of Waimea, it turned into a hilly, farmland/forest area with lush green hillsides, clouds that hugged the hills and tree-lined roadways that reminded us of Door County in Wisconsin. The weather was cool - temperatures were in the upper 60's as we drove toward the east coast of the island. But it was sunny and pleasant. Much nicer than what it was back in Iowa.

When we got to Honoka'a, we screwed up. We should have taken a backroad up to the lookout overlooking the Waipi'o Valley. The Waipi'o Valley, we found out later during our trip, is not only breathtaking in its beauty, it has a historical reverence among native Hawaiians. It was in the Waipi'o Valley that Kamehameha the Great was proclaimed ruler of all the Hawaiian Islands in 1780. In fact, the Waipi'o Valley is known as "The Valley of Kings" as many of Hawaii's rulers lived in the Valley during their reign. We did get back up to Waipi'o Valley a few days later, hoping to find a site to take a picture of the full moon rising out of the ocean. But it was raining tremendously that day - and evening - and we weren't able to take the pictures or take in the spectacular views of the valley. That's probably the biggest regret I have about our visit to Hawaii.

Heading past Honaka'a, the road turned south along the eastern coast of the Big Island. The weather had turned warmer, but was still somewhat breezy. As we were heading along, we'd turn off on sideroads just to see where they'd go. More often than not they'd lead to nowhere, but sometimes there would be a little seaside village at the end of the road. One little village we visited was Paauhau, a little place that had really nothing more than a post office and a few small houses. This is the view of the sea on the steep hillside road going down to Paauhau.

Hawaii State Highway 19 from that point south follows what was an old sugar train route that would transport sugar cane to facilities in Hilo to get processed and shipped out. It was a nice road, albeit somewhat heavily traveled.

Along the highway to Hilo, there were a number of little scenic turnouts that looked out over the ocean. We just happened to stop at one such turnout just to check out the view. What we got was a pleasant surprise - a humpback whale frolicking in the ocean. At first, Cindy and I were the only ones there. But our pointing and our picture taking must have garnered some attention as the parking lot quickly filled with cars. And we got quite a show. While the whale never fully breached the surface, its tail - known as a fluke - popped up from time to time. It went on for about five minutes. It provided quite a thrill for Cindy who just loves watching the whales.

There was a row of houses just below the scenic overlook. I heard a guy down below say, "It's quite a sight, isn't it?" I looked down and there was a guy, probably in his 60's, looking out at the same thing we were seeing with a pair of binoculars. "That's really something else," he said as he put the binoculars back up to his face. I figured that if a resident of Hawaii thinks seeing the whales play in the ocean is a neat sight, it must REALLY be a neat sight!

The scenic overlook along the highway looked down to what appeared to be a park area down by the coastline. We tracked back about a mile and came across an access road that took us down to the open area bounded by black volcanic rocks that went into a small bay. The open area was a small park that once housed a school house where a number of school children and their teachers were swept away by the April Fools Day tsunami in 1946. There is a memorial near the shoreline with the names of those who lost their lives that day.

But there was something sort of surreal about the point. There really wasn't a beach, but there were young kids swimming in the pools shielded by lava rock. The waves were coming in and pounding the rocks, but the pools close to shore were relatively calm. The grass and vegetation in the park was overly green, given that we were on the windward side of the island and they received a lot of rain annually. But that day was beautiful with temps in the mid-70's.

We got back up on the main road to Hilo and headed south. A few miles north of Hilo, we saw a sign that directed us to a side road that was designated as a scenic roadway. Called the Pepe'ekeo Scenic Drive, it's a four mile stretch of roadway through a jungle of African Lilly trees and other tropical foliage. Along the way there was the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Gardens. We were told this was one of the "must see" things while we were in Hawaii as the gardens feature natural waterfalls, over 2000 species of plants and flowers, and a beautiful view of the ocean. Admission was $15 bucks, which wasn't a problem, but Cindy was sort of looking for a beach to go to. We passed on the Botanical Gardens not knowing what we missed, or if we really missed anything. I mean, we had seen a lot of lavish flowers and plants at our hotel. What more could we see?

At the start of the Pepe'ekeo Scenic Drive on the north side was this little general store. We stopped in so we could get some water. They had a map of the U.S. with pins in the cities from people who had visited their store. Davenport, IA was already pinned.

Cindy got to talking with the two 20-something sisters working the store with their like-aged brother. Cindy remarked to the girls, "You know it's a shame when a pack of cigarettes ($6.99) was cheaper than a gallon of milk ($8.79)."

One of the girls said, "I know, everything is horrendously high priced in Hawaii."

The other girl asked, "How much is gas where you're from?" I told her that I paid $2.79 a gallon just before we came to Hawaii. She exclaimed, "$2.79 a gallon? Oh, I wish we could get gas for under $3.00 a gallon here!"

Cindy ended up getting an iced coffee instead of a water. She said it was very good. Hawaiian coffee did smell wonderful, I have to admit.

The scenic drive reconnected with Highway 19 just about four miles north of Hilo. We drove a couple miles down the road and we passed a cemetery with this huge banyan tree right in the middle of the property. It looked perfectly proportioned and Cindy had me go back so she could get some pictures of it. The cemetery was sectioned off in plots for Korean, Japanese and Hawaiian families. It was sort of interesting. With the big banyan tree and the ocean in the background, it was a beautiful final resting place. We lingered in the cemetery for awhile before we headed into Hilo.

Hilo was not really what I expected. Actually, I expected a somewhat modern tropical paradise. It was far from that. A good portion of the downtown area was destroyed with the tsunami of 1960. But it looked like they hadn't done any updating since 1960. Store fronts and buildings had an older look to them, sort of like a land where time had been forgotten. I remarked a couple times that downtown Hilo looked like pictures of Havana, Cuba that I've seen. It looked stuck in the 50's and 60's. It wasn't that it was bad, but we certainly didn't think it was worth getting out to walk around the downtown area.

Residential areas weren't much better. There were a number of houses that I would categorize as "shacks" with metal roofs and thin walls. I do have to say the area around and on the University of Hawaii-Hilo campus was very nice, however. It sort of looked like a nice place to go to school. I'm sure any place on Hawaii would be a nice place to go to school.

We ended up on the Hilo Bay waterfront as Cindy wanted to go out and walk on the beach to look for shells. The Hilo Bay beach is, well, it's not that nice of a beach. It's a ruddy, black sand beach where it's more rocky pumice than sand. It was somewhat muddy, as well. We were the only people on the beach, so that probably should have told us something there. It had begun to cloud over and the wind was coming in pretty strong off the sea. Much to Cindy's dismay there were little to no sea shells to be found. But she did find some interesting clear green and brown glass-like objects on the beach. When she showed them to me, I said, "Cindy, that's glass from broken beer bottles."

She went, "Ee-yew," and threw them down.

We drove around Hilo for a bit before heading out of town back toward our hotel on the other side of the island. We decided to take Saddle Road back across the island. One of our guide books was describing Saddle Road as a "rugged former Army road built during World War II to ferry troops across the island between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa". But it also cautioned that much of the road was in such bad shape and dangerous that some rental car agencies wouldn't permit their cars on the road. We never got that warning from Hertz.

When we stopped at the general store on the Pepe'ekeo scenic drive, Cindy asked the people about driving on Saddle Road. The young guy said, "The first few miles out of Hilo are a little rough, but then they're working on the road around the 12 mile mark. For about seven miles, you'll be in road work and the going will be slow. But after that the road is new and you can go pretty well on it. But on the western end, it goes back to the way it used to be - very narrow roads, tricky curves on hills and pretty rough." He also said to look out for the locals who drive the road on a daily basis and they know every turn, twist and pot hole. "And they drive it fast!" Cindy was sort of hesitant to go on it, but we decided to give it a try.

Saddle Road was everything the young guy said it was. We started a steady climb up Highway 200 west of Hilo and encountered a lot of road construction along the way. They were either resurfacing existing road surfaces or where constructing a new road that wouldn't be as winding with a lot of blind curves as the old road was. A few miles further down the road, it turned into a wonderful road with wide shoulders, plainly marked lanes and a smooth ride. Then almost as suddenly just past Mauna Kea, the road turned into this rough, narrow patch of roadway with difficult sight distances. It continued that way to the western terminus just south of Waimea.

The weather was fluid, as well. The temperature dropped as we continued our climb and we encountered rain showers. Almost as quickly as we ran into rain, it stopped, the clouds parted and the sun came out. They always say in Iowa that if you don't like the weather just wait 15 minutes. Well, on the Big Island you can drive 15 miles and go from cold and rainy to warm and sunny. Or in the case on Saddle Road from cold and rainy to cool and sunny.

Saddle Road goes right in between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. It basically goes on the "saddle" between the two mountains. The GPS we had with us showed that at its highest point Saddle Road was 6,831 feet above sea level. And the temperatures were in the upper 50's at that point. This is a picture of Mauna Loa, which in the Hawaiian language means "Long Mountain". (Mauna Kea is Hawaiian for "White Mountain" because of the snow that caps the peak at times.) I tried my best to get a picture of Mauna Loa. Of course, after I took this picture, I realized that our new camera that we bought before we went to Hawaii had a program with it that allowed you to take a chain of shots and the program would fuse them together into one panoramic picture. That's why I got more of the road instead of the mountain in this picture. But you get the idea of how long the mountain is.

We were damn happy to get off Saddle Road at it's western junction with the Highway 190, the main road between Waimea and Kailua-Kona. We were still about 3,000 feet above sea level and about 12 miles from our hotel. We had just been buzzed by natives in their trucks, taking the narrow curves at over 35 miles and hour. We had to navigate around pot holes, drop offs on the side of the road and one-lane bridges where it was a life-or-death contest to see who would get the right of way. I can see why some car rental agencies wouldn't let their cars on Saddle Road before the construction began. It's sort of weird that they're now working on the east end of the road, and the middle part is as nice of a highway that you find anywhere. But the last 10 miles of the west end of the road appears to have no maintenance or upkeep since the original gravel road was paved in 1949. We needed a couple stiff mai-tai's back at the hotel to calm us down upon our arrival.

I understand they're now doing environmental studies on the feasibility of reworking the last 10 miles of Saddle Road on the west side of the island. Those studies should be complete sometime this year. The goal is to have Saddle Road completely done by 2012 offering a safe and quick way for people to go from Kailua-Kona to Hilo rather than around the southern or northern sides of the Big Island.

While we didn't experience the 11 of the 13 microclimates found the Big Island, we certainly were in a lot of different types of weather on our trip that day. There was a lot of great scenery and we're certain we missed a lot of other things that we could have stopped to see if we'd just taken the time. We didn't really plan the day out that well - we should have left much earlier in the day. We never really decided to take off for Hilo until after we had breakfast at the Hawaiian Style Cafe in Waimea. And it was nearly 11 o'clock when we finished there.

But as far as the overall drive was concerned, it was beautiful going along Highway 19 on the eastern shore of the Big Island. While I really wanted to have some time to sit by the ocean and chill out at the hotel, I'm really glad we took the day to go explore the eastern side of the island. My advice would be to rent a car for at least a day (most of the resorts on the west side of the island have car rental agencies on site) and go explore the island. It was certainly one of the highlights of our trip to the Big Island.

When the Tsunami warnings were issued when we were on the Big Island, it basically screwed up our plans of having breakfast that morning at Harbor Grillin the northwest coastal village of Kawaihae (Ka-WHY-hey), just up the coast from our hotel in the Waikoloa Beach Resort. Harbor Grill had come as a top recommendation for both breakfast and dinner from Rick, the concierge at the Hilton Waikoloa Village. Since we couldn't make it for breakfast earlier in the day, we decided to go up for dinner instead that evening. It was about a 15 minute drive from our hotel to Kawaihae on a beautiful Hawaiian evening.

The Harbor Grill is one of two sister restaurants side-by-side just off the highway coming into Kawaihae (see map). The more casual Seafood Bar occupies the upper floor above a handful of small businesses just to the south of the Harbor Grill. The Harbor Grill is the more elegant of the two with a somewhat antique nautical theme to the decor of the restaurant. The owner of both restaurants - James "Popeye" Brisson - is sort of a local character around Kawaihae. Brisson and his wife, Carolyn, have collected a number of old nautical artifacts and pictures and have done a wonderful job in incorporating them into a 1930's Hawaiian style building.

It was far from busy that evening at The Harbor Grill, quite possibly from the fall out of the tsunami warning earlier in the day. The Harbor Grill had a few tables on an outside patio, but it looked more inviting inside. We were seated at a table back in the corner and given menus to look over.

The chef and manager of the Harbor Grill, Darcy Ambrosia, features a number of fresh seafood dishes along with grass-fed Hawaiian-raised beef. While the menu isn't extensive, it's interesting with pasta, steaks, ribs and, of course, seafood cooked in many different ways.

Our waiter came out and introduced himself. I was sort of surprised when he said his name. I asked again and he said what I thought he said the first time. His name was "Lurch". Lurch, like in the Addams Family. I said, "Really? Is that a nickname?"

He said, "No sir. That's my given name."

I said, "Really?" I didn't mean to be incredulous, but I'd never heard that name given to a person before. I asked him, "Are you German?"

He said, "Well, I grew up outside of Cincinnati, but it is a German name."

Cindy said, "That's kinda neat!"

Lurch said, "Yeah, well, it's a great conversation starter with the ladies."

Lurch told us that he had been in Hawaii for 13 years. He said that even though he gets back to the mainland from time to time to see his family, "this is home."

We immediately ordered up a shrimp cocktail and I wanted a mai tai. Lurch said, "We have the best mai tai's on the island. Guaranteed." I had to sign up for one of those. Cindy wanted wine, so she ordered a glass of the Renato Pinot Grigio.

When Lurch brought the mai tai out, it was the deepest, darkest color for a mai tai that I'd seen on the island. Cindy thought they put Grand Marnier in their mai tai, but it was the real 151-proof dark rum. Lurch told me that along with the pineapple juice, they put lilikoi juice into their mai tai's. It was absolutely as good as promised. But you've really got to watch your intake with mai tai's. This one was very good and a second one was almost ordered, but I decided to back off and get a Kona Big Wave Golden Ale after I finished the mai tai.

We were sort of stuck as what to get. Lurch brought out the shrimp cocktail and told us of the special that evening. They had a shinomo fresh-catch that evening. Shinomo is sort of a broad-nosed swordfish that's lighter and more flaky than swordfish. He said it could be grilled, steamed or grilled with cajun seasonings and served with stir-fried veggies and smashed potatoes. That sounded pretty good.

Cindy was asking about the Red Thai Seafood Curry that was on the menu. Lurch explained that it was a combination of a fresh-catch fish - that day it was ono - along with scallops, mussels and Thai veggies in a slightly spicy red curry sauce. Cindy said, "Oh, that sounds good. That's what I'm gonna have."

I was torn between getting a steak or seafood and I asked Lurch to re-describe the fresh catch special that evening. When he got to the cajun seasoning part, I said, "Sold. That sounds great."

It was a 20 minute wait between our order and getting the food to or tables. That afforded me another chance to have a Big Wave Golden Ale. I was probably going to get a glass of wine with dinner, but the Big Wave Golden Ale was so light and refreshing as a beer that I couldn't pass up ordering another before the meal came out.

Lurch brought our meals out and I was pleasantly surprised at the size of the shinomo that was on the plate. It was covered with tons of cajun spices - just as I like - and served with a creamy lilikoi sauce. From the first bite to the last, it was just outstanding. The taste sensations that exploded in my mouth were intense, but not overpowering. The creamy lilikoi sauce knocked some of the spiciness out of the fish, but didn't detract from the overall taste.

Cindy said that her Red Thai Curry Seafood was equally wonderful. We traded bites back and forth and I just loved that slightly spicy curry sauce they used on her entree. The ono was light, yet had a lot of flavor. We were in culinary heaven with this meal.

Lurch came out and offered us a dessert menu. We were pretty full from dinner, but one thing caught my eye - a frosted lemon shortbread bar with a side of vanilla ice cream. Cindy sort of protested, but when I reminded her we were on vacation, she said, "OK, bring us that and a couple spoons or forks or whatever." And it, too was very good. The lemon bar was very rich, but really had a great forward lemon taste.

Our meal at the Harbor Grill was one of the finest we had during our time in Hawaii, and we had a lot of great meals. Not only was the food top-notch, the atmosphere was elegant, but relaxed, and our waiter - Lurch - was overly attentive, but knew when to leave us alone. We did get one of their breakfast menus to take with us and I'm sort of upset that we never took the time to try out their Hawaiian sweet bread French toast with orange zest. We'll just have to come back and try it at some point in the future, I guess.

(Update - In doing some research for linking some of the Road Tips entry to Urbanspoon, I found that Harbor Grill is now closed. I hope Lurch found a job at another restaurant.)

The Kona Brewing Company in Kailua-Kona on the Big Island is one of the more famous brew pubs in the U.S. It was at the top of my list to try when we got to the Hawaiian Islands. On our first full day on the Big Island, we went there for lunch and a few beers.

The Kona Brewing Company has been around since the mid-90's when the father and son team of Cameron Healy and Spoon Khalsa moved back to the Big Island from Oregon to start a brewery which featured beers that were to be made with "spirit, passion and quality". Their first beer, Pacific Golden Ale, was released on February 14, 1995. It became a hit and within three years they introduced their second beer, their famous Longboard Island Lager. More beers came along the way and today the original brewery in Kailua-Kona brews 10 beers and puts out over 10,000 barrels annually.

Five of their beers are bottled and made available all over Hawaii. However, Kona Brewing Company has a brewing agreement with Widmer Brothers Brewery in Portland, OR and with Redhook Ale Brewery in Portsmouth, NH to brew and bottle their Longboard Lager and Fire Rock Pale Ale, as well as their seasonal Pipeline Porter and Wailua Wheat Ale. Although Kona Brewing Company says they maintain strict brewing control over their mainland brewed beers - even down to the mineral content of the water that goes into making their beers, locals told us they're not the same. Anheuser-Busch has an agreement with Kona Brewing to distribute the beer in select markets in the U.S. mainland. I've never seen any around the Midwest. The closest distributor is in Colorado.

Today, in conjunction with their west coast and east coast brewers, Kona Brewing Company is the 14th largest craft brewer in the nation quickly approaching 100,000 barrels of beer sold annually. But, quite unfortunately, neither of the two mainland breweries brew and bottle what turned out to be my favorite Kona beer - Big Wave Golden Ale (the original Pacific Golden Ale became Big Wave Golden Ale a few years ago). More about that beer later on.

We slept in on our first morning on Hawaii and had a late breakfast at the hotel. We took off in our rental convertible with the top down and the sun shining down on the Kohala Coast of the Big Island. It was a beautiful day with the temps in the low 80's. We had driven around the downtown are of Kailua-Kona earlier that was teeming with tourists from a cruise ship moored out in the bay. A lot of the restaurants and shops were tourist trap joints, beckoning people to come in and spend their money. It was really too much for us.

As we tried to drive away from the touristy area, I got the idea. "Hey, I want to find that Kona Brewing Company!" Cindy asked if they had food and I said, "Oh, yeah. And I guess it's pretty good." I put the name of the place into my GPS and it came right up. Turned out we weren't very far away.

The Brewpub at Kona Brewing Company is right next to the original brewery just north of the intersection of Kuakini Highway and Palani Road (see map). The brew pub opened in part of the brewery in 1998. At the time, Cameron Healy brought in Mattson Davis from Oregon to oversee the restaurant's operation. Today, Mattson Davis is the President and CEO of Kona Brewing Company.

The menu consists of a number of varieties of fresh seafood and homegrown produce from the Hawaiian Islands. The brew pub is also famous for their varieties of gourmet pizzas in which they use a garlic-infused olive oil base in their dough. Davis had worked for a Portland, OR-based small chain of gourmet pizza restaurants - Pizzicato. He kept the gourmet pizza concept with Kona Brewing Company's brew pub menu, but also added a number of appetizers, sandwiches and entrees that highlighted the Hawaiian grown concept behind the menu.

It was around 2:30 when we got to the front hostess stand just outside the outdoor seating area of the brew pub. True enough, there was a working brewery right next door, right down to fork lifts maneuvering pallets of keg beer around an outside, fenced-in holding area. It had kind of a weird industrial, yet tropical feel to the place. It turned out that a lot of people were having a late lunch that afternoon and our wait was going to be about 20 minutes. There were a handful of people sitting on benches near the hostess stand. I asked the hostess if we could go in and get a beer from the bar. She said, "Sure, but the 'beepers' here don't work in the bar for some reason, so you need to be outside to get 'buzzed'."

I was hoping their beer would give me enough of a buzz.

We went into the bar and the smell of their pizza hit us like a brick oven. Oh, my God, it smelled wonderful! We sort of looked at one another and Cindy said, "Oh, God, Will! Smell that! I don't know if I want a pizza, but that smell is so tempting!" We picked up a menu while we were standing at the packed bar waiting to order a beer. We took a look at the prices of their pizzas and that was probably the first time we realized restaurants in Hawaii weren't going to be cheap. Just a basic 10" pepperoni pizza was $12 bucks. OK, well, we're on vacation in Hawaii.

It took us a little while for the bartender to get over to get our beer order. She was really working her tail off. In addition to five bottled beers, Kona Brewing also has five beers on tap. We both ordered up their Castaway India Pale Ale. Actually, it's more of a mild American Pale Ale that does have some subtle hoppiness, but isn't as forward as most India Pale Ales. We grabbed our glasses and went back outside to enjoy the day.

While we were waiting at the bar, I noticed a number of posters on the wall of the inside of the brew pub touting shows that Kona Brewing Company had put on in the past. They had shows that featured the likes of John Mayall, Robert Cray, Eric Johnson, Jonny Lang, Walter Trout, and Everclear. It appeared that many of the shows were part of some blues festival that Kona Brewing Company evidently sponsored. When we went back outside, we ended up at the counter of the Kona Brewing gift shop, just near the hostess stand. We got to talking with the young guy working behind the counter.

I asked him about all the shows on the posters in the main restaurant and asked where they had them. He said, "Oh, we'd have 'em right here at the brewery. That fenced in area was the backstage area, we put a stage in front of that and then people stood or brought lawn chairs in the parking lot."

I asked when the last show was and he said, "Oh, geez, I don't know. 2004 or so. It's been awhile." He explained that they would have to shut down both the brewery and brew pub for two or three days to pull it off. He said, "We can't afford to do that any longer." He did say that they still sponsor much smaller shows that feature lesser known or local artists, but the days of the bigger shows are pretty much over.

He explained that even before the economic downturn, business has been down at both the brewery and the brew pub due to a tourism slump in Kailua-Kona. He said, "See that big cruise ship out in the harbor? We used to have three of them come a couple times a week. Now we only get one a couple times a week." He said the place used to be packed with tourists - some days, the wait for a table would be 90 minutes. "These days, we're just holding on with what we get."

It wasn't much longer when our pager buzzed and we were taken to a table deep in the outdoor seating area. We were seated at a table right next to a sea turtle sculpture that was pretty neat. The late lunch crowd had begun to sort of filter out and our waitress came right away to check our drink orders and to drop off a couple menus. I was almost done with my pale ale and I asked if I could get a Big Wave Golden Ale. She said, "Oh, I'm sorry. We're out of that today."

I said, "We're at the brewery and it's one of your most popular beers and you're out of it today?"

She gave me a pained look and said, "Yeah, I know. I'm sorry." I decided to try one of the Longboard Lagers. She said, "I know we have that today." The Longboard Lagers are a little more full-bodied than most American Lagers. It had sort of a Germanic lager taste to it. But it was very good.

Cindy and I had ruled out getting a pizza. She was on a mission to have some fish and since most of Kona Brewing Company's seafood is freshly caught, she decided on getting the Lawai'a Special - a sandwich that featured the fish of the day, grilled and put onto a homemade bun and topped with lettuce, tomato and a special sauce. Ahi tuna was the catch of the day and she asked to have hers cooked medium rare.

I was still thinking of getting at the very least a calzone, but I saw something on the menu that sounded great - Uncle's Fish Tacos. I'm a sucker for fish tacos, especially if they're grilled and not breaded and deep-fried. (That's like eating fish sticks on taco shells.) I asked our waitress how the fish in the fish tacos was prepared and she said, "We season the fish with cajun spices, then we bake the filets in the oven. Then we pull the filets apart when we serve them on the taco shells." I happily signed up for that.

The outdoor seating area was very casual and very laid-back. Each table had a huge umbrella that kept the hot sun off the tables and it was nice and cool. There was sort of a garden area off to the side and Cindy pointed out this one plant to me. She said, "What is that?" I took a look and immediately recognized little flower clusters of fresh hops growing in a planter near the building. Only I'd never seen hops that color before. They were kind of the normal green at the bottom, but were sort of a deep red at the top. I figured it must have been some sort of a tropical hop plant. I guess I should have asked.

When she brought the fish tacos out, I was overly surprised at the presentation. They were topped with fresh island-grown cabbage and a salsa that included black beans, sweet corn, tomatoes, green onions and cilantro. And the fish was topped with a chipotle yogurt sauce with avacado aioli - a avacado/sour cream sauce that also has lemon and lime juices, with minced garlic, fresh basil and jalapenos. It was outstanding. I've got to make that for my fish tacos at home.

Cindy also declared her Ahi tuna fish sandwich as being outstanding. The chunk of tuna was the perfect size for a sandwich and it was cooked perfectly to her liking. She ended up taking the ahi tuna off the bun about half-way through the meal to savor the taste of the fish. She gave me a little bite of the tuna and it was excellent. And I let her have a bite of my fish tacos and she got this look on her face of "Oh my God!" She said with a mouthful of food, "That's great!" And it was great.

Lunch wasn't overly cheap - with our food and four beers (I went back to the Castaway Pale Ale for my last beer and Cindy had the same) the bill came to just over $50 bucks before tip. And our waitress was very good so she got a 20% tip on top of the bill.

Before we left we stopped at the gift shop and Cindy got a Kona Brewing Company visor that she could wear in the car when we had the top down. And I picked up a Big Wave Golden Ale t-shirt. It wasn't until later in the day when I was able to try a Big Wave Golden Ale back at the hotel. I'm not big on fruit beers, but the fruit taste in the Big Wave Golden Ale was so subtle that it wasn't really noticeable. The combination of the flavors in the beer made it a very refreshing taste sensation, especially on those warm Hawaiian days. It immediately became my beer of choice when we'd go out for dinner or when we'd stop off at the bar at the hotel.

Of all the things that I probably miss most about Hawaii is the Kona Big Wave Golden Ale. I was hoping that it would be available on the mainland, but it isn't. I actually looked up on line to see if I could get Big Wave Golden Ale shipped to me in Iowa. I found a wine store in Kailua-Kona that would sell me a case of Big Wave Golden Ale for $47.96. Getting it to Iowa from Hawaii (as we found when we shipped a couple boxes back home) ain't cheap. It would cost $95 bucks to have it shipped regular FedEx Ground. But I'm not kidding you - I'm still thinking about it.

The food at the Kona Brewing Company was excellent. We loved the outdoor seating area and the coziness of the indoor bar area. The beer was equally excellent. We had entertained going back to the place to get a pizza at some point, but just like many other places we really liked on our visit to Hawaii, we never made it back - mainly because of all the options available to us. But even if we don't ever make it back to the Big Island, I'll always have great memories of the beer and the great fish tacos at Kona Brewing Company.

A guy who works for one of my dealers in the Chicago area spent some time in Hawaii a few years ago and he gave me some good suggestions of where to go and where to eat. One of the places he told us to visit while in/on Hawaii was Sansei Seafood and Sushi Restaurant. There are four Sansei's in Hawaii - one on Oahu, two on Maui and one on the Big Island. It turned out the one on the Big Island was in the Queen's Marketplace shops near our hotel in the Wiakoloa Beach Resort area. We had hoped to be able to get to Sansei the night we arrived in Hawaii, but a delay at the rental car agency (thanks to a very stupid person in line ahead of us) and a long detour to our hotel pretty much ruled out getting there before they closed. So our first full night on Hawaii we went to Sansei.

Sansei is part of the D.K. Restaurantsgroup that also features d.k Steak House, Hiroshi and Vino - all highly acclaimed restaurants throughout the Hawaiian Islands. "D.K." are the initials of Dave "D.K." Kodama, the founder and owner of the D.K. restaurants. Kodama is a native Hawaiian who left the University of Hawaii in 1979 and ended up as a bartender in Seattle. Kodama fell in love with the restaurant business and thought it would be a more fun profession than being an engineer.

After 3 years in Seattle, Kodama ended up in Aspen, CO, working at a number of restaurants, learning the business and getting valuable culinary training on the job. He ended up moving back to Hawaii in 1996 and opened his first Sansei in the Kapalua Resort north of Lahaina on Maui. Sansei specializes in fresh seafood and serving locally grown foods. It's sort of a contemporary Pan-asian seafood restaurant that also has sushi.

It was about a three minute drive from the Hilton Waikoloa Village hotel to the Queen's Marketplace shopping center (see map). Sansei is located on the far east end of the open air shops. We had a short wait while the hostess took a phone call, but we were in no hurry. We asked if we could just sit at the sushi bar and she happily took us over to the bar, seated us and gave us menus.

The restaurant, itself, was a nice mix of contemporary Hawaiian and Asian themes. It wasn't a huge place, but there was a dining area off to the side of the main room. The main dining room featured the sushi bar. The atmosphere was relaxed, upscale casual and sort of romantic. It wasn't overly busy at the restaurant, which was sort of nice.

We figured we'd just do sushi for our visit, so I asked for a sushi menu. Our sushi chef was a native mainlander who had been in Hawaii for about 15 years. During our trip to Hawaii, we talked to a lot of restaurant workers, waiters, hotel valets, salespeople, etc. who were obviously not native Hawaiians just to see what their story was and how they ended up in Hawaii. We heard all different types of stories from guys who followed girls out to Hawaii, guys who came out for a couple months and just stayed for the past 19 years, and from people who needed to start their lives over. As one waiter told us one evening, "Hawaii is really full of misfits, people who may not have fit in back home on the mainland, or who are getting away from whatever problems they faced in their past. This is the ultimate "misfit island."

The sushi chef at Sansei was no exception. He had worked at the original Sansei on Maui after coming out from the mainland "to drink and stay tan". He moved to this location three years ago when it first opened. He said, "My life is pretty simple here. If I'm not at work, I'm usually in a bar somewhere. And if I'm not at work or at a bar, I'm sleeping. That's my life." While some people may think that was sort of sad, I secretly envied the guy. No concerns, no worries, no responsibilities.

We immediately ordered up a spicy tuna roll and something that Cindy wanted to try something called the "69 Roll". It's a California roll (crab, avocado, cucumber) rolled inside out and topped with unagi (fresh water eel) and salmon roe. It was interesting, to say the least. The spicy tuna rolls were much better.

We had regular salmon and smoked salmon sushi, along with tuna and sweet shrimp sushi. The prices weren't bad - averaging around $3.50 to $4.00 for two pieces of sushi. The tuna was a little more expensive - I believe it was $8.00 for two pieces of sushi. But that was still cheaper than many mainland sushi restaurants.

And the fish was so fresh that... Well, I have to say that I'd never had tuna - any type of tuna sushi - that tasted that good. It was like they had caught the fish, filet'ed it out on the boat and served it - all within 15 minutes. It literally melted in our mouths. And the smoked salmon was - by far - the best smoked salmon I'd ever had. We ended up ordering two more pieces of the tuna and smoked salmon, along with another spicy tuna roll for good measure.

We figured we'd eat at Sansei a couple more times when we were on both Hawaii and on Maui, but for multiple reasons - such as too many good choices of restaurants - we never did. But the place certainly served our sushi craving needs. It was some of the best sushi I've ever had. No, I'll go even further and say it was the best sushi I ever had. And it wasn't all that expensive. With a generous tip for the sushi chef and our waitress that served us our drinks, it still came to under $100 bucks. It was just excellent.

Breakfast is big on Hawaii. Nearly every restaurant we encountered served breakfast - even at some of the more fancy places we dined. On the recommendation of Rick, a concierge at the Hilton Waikoloa Village resort, he directed us up into the "hill" country on the north side of the Big Island for breakfast one morning at Hawaiian Style Cafe in Waimea. He said, "Be prepared, the portions are huge!"

As we were leaving the hotel, one of the valets brought our car around and he asked, "Where are you headed today?" I told him we were going up to Waimea to go have breakfast. "The Hawaiian Style Cafe," he excitedly replied. "Oh, man. The pancakes up there are the size of hubcaps! And they're really good! I'm so jealous!"

It's about a 20 mile drive up to Waimea from the Hilton resort (see map). And up is the operative term here. After driving along the shoreline up to the intersection, you turn right and immediately begin a gradual ascent into the hills. After a couple miles a sign along the side of the road informed we were at an elevation of 500 feet. A couple more miles we came across a sign that said we were at 1000 feet. This went on until we got on the outskirts of Waimea where a sign told us that we were at 2500 feet, nearly a half mile above sea level. And the temperature had changed, as well. We had the top down on the way up - the temperature was in the lower 80's when we left the hotel. But when we got to Waimea, it was a cool 69 degrees. Cindy had turned on the heat as we pulled into town.

We found the Hawaiian Style Cafe on the main road coming into Waimea (see map) in a small old-style strip mall that featured a travel agency and a motorcycle shop. We were able to find one of the few parking spots in front of the restaurant, but we also found out later that there was parking in the rear of the building.

The restaurant is owned by Guy and Gina Kao'o, who also have second jobs in the area. Guy oversees the food for lu'aus at a couple local hotels, including the Marriott Waikoloa Village resort next to the Hilton; while Gina is a local realtor in Waimea. The restaurant opens at 7 a.m. and serves breakfast and then lunch until 2 p.m. - or when they run out of food.

It was a short wait (we had to put our name on a list just inside the door) while we got a booth in the corner in the front area of the restaurant. The place is truly a hole-in-the-wall joint with a three-sided bar, small back eating area, one bathroom for the restaurant (it also serves as a laundry room), and a number of local pictures and magazine covers adorning the wall. The waitress gave us our menus and pointed out the specials on the wall near the kitchen. The place was a flurry of activity with people coming and going and large portions of food on plates being brought out from the kitchen. It was almost dizzying.

We weren't overly certain what to get. They had a number of Hawaiian dishes for breakfast including something called a Loco Moco. We found that most Hawaiian breakfast places had their own style of a Loco Moco. The legend of the Loco Moco began in the late 40's at the Lincoln Grill in Hilo. A bunch of hungry young men came into the restaurant one day, but told the owner, Nancy Inouye, that they didn't have a lot of money. She had a lot of rice left over and fried up some hamburger patties. She put the hamburgers on the rice, then a fried egg on top and, for good measure she put brown gravy on top of all that. It was a hit and immediately became a great "pig-out" food whether it be at 7:30 in the morning or at 1:30 in the morning when the bars were closing up.

Another thing that was on the menu that I wasn't familiar with was Portuguese sausage. It's sort of like chorizo, seasoned with onions, garlic and paprika. It's rather mild and somewhat bland compared to the pork sausage I'm used to back in the Midwest. They featured a number of items on the menu paired with Portuguese sausage.

Spam is also huge in Hawaii. I don't quite understand why, but it is. Spam is a staple on the breakfast menu of many restaurants. I thought, "Well, while we're in Hawaii I have to try SOMETHING with Spam in it." And the Hawaiian Style Cafe featured a Spam, mushroom, grilled onions and cheese omelet. I ordered that. With it came a side of hash browns and then I got my pick of an additional side of either pancakes or fried rice. I took the pancakes. Oh, and I also got a side of whole wheat toast. I knew this was going to be a lot of food just from what I was seeing coming out from the kitchen.

Cindy ordered more simple - she got a couple eggs over easy, but then she also got a side of kalua pork hash. Kalua is a slow-roasting method that is indigenous to Hawaii. Usually, the pork butt is seasoned with salt and wrapped in leafs from a ti plant. It's placed in the ground, usually over lava rocks, and slow-cooked until it's tender and the meat begins to fall apart. Kalua pork has sort of a fruity taste to it, probably from the ti leaves. And it's served at lu'aus. But it was difficult to find at many restaurants in Hawaii. The waitress at the Hawaiian Style Cafe told us that they'll have a Kalua pork special from time to time, but they didn't have any that day, other than in the hash. Cindy also got a side of fried rice that had ham and egg in it.

It didn't take long before our food came out to the table. And I'm sure the expression on our faces when the waitress set our plates down in front of us wasn't the first time she'd seen the bulging eyes and heard the "Oh, my GOD!!" expression. The portions WERE huge! The pancakes were as advertised - almost a foot in diameter. I knew immediately there was no way in hell that I'd ever finish even HALF of what they served me.

I tried some of Cindy's Kalua pork hash. It was very good. The Kalua pork had sort of a sweet and fruity taste to it. The pork was tender and excellent. (I found out later on that they make Kalua pork omelets. I was kicking myself for not getting one of those.)

We did make a significant dent into the food. The Spam omelet was, well, interesting. It wasn't bad, but I can't say that I'm a huge fan of Spam. But when in Hawaii, do as the Hawaiians, I guess. They fried the Spam and chunked it up when they put it in the omelet, sort of like how they'd do it with sausage. But it was an interesting combination in the omelet along with the mushrooms and onions.

The pancakes weren't bad, either. They were a little more thick that what I like, but they were still pretty darn good. In addition to maple syrup, they also had lilikoisyrup. Lilikoi is sort of a Hawaiian passion fruit that I fell in love with while we were there. They put lilikoi in everything from syrups, juices, jellies, and even a mixer in drinks. We had some awesome desserts with lilikoi while we were in Hawaii, as well. On the pancakes, the lilikoi syrup was sort of sweet and fruity. I should have gone to a store to look for some to take back home with us.

And quite unintentionally, we made it back to the Hawaiian Style Cafe on the day we were evacuated from our hotel during the tsunami warning that I talked about earlier. We were looking for this other restaurant we were told about by Rick at the Hilton, but with the traffic in and around Waimea that day, we just decided to cut our losses and go back to the Hawaiian Style Cafe. This time, in keeping with my "do as the Hawaiians do" theme, I ordered a Loco Moco.

I can see why some people like the Loco Moco. It's definitely a "stick to your ribs" type of meal. I can't say that it was my favorite, but it was interesting. The hamburger patties were a little overcooked and dry, but the gravy helped get them down. The Loco Moco sort of reminded me of something that is served at Ross' Restaurant in the Quad Cities - the Magic Mountain. They take a couple pieces of Texas Toast, top it with loose hamburger meat, then top it with French fries or hash browns (your choice), then they top it with cheddar cheese. And if you want a snow-capped Magic Mountain, order onions on the top. For the truly adventurous - like me - you can get a Volcano at Ross'. Instead of topping the plate with cheese, they top it with their spicy chili. But Ross' is another story for another time.

This time, Cindy went to the "specials" board they had on the wall and ordered the 12 oz. Rib Eye steak. She said, "I don't know if we'll get back to the hotel tonight and a lot of places may be closed up if the waves do hit this islands. This may be my last meal until sometime tomorrow." True to form, she couldn't eat all of her steak along with the two eggs and fried rice on the side. This time they boxed up Cindy's steak. We figured we may have to share what was left later on, but thankfully, we didn't have to.

All in all, the Hawaiian Style Cafe was very good and very interesting. I really wanted to try the Spaghetti omelet, but figured that would be a little weird. It was probably the most authentic Hawaiian restaurant we ate at when we were visiting the state. Overall, the service was great, the food was interesting and if you don't mind a little wait from time to time, it's an excellent place to get breakfast on the Big Island. The Hawaiian Style Cafe was one of our favorite places while we were in Hawaii and more than once since we've been back we've remarked how cool it would be if we could go to Hawaiian Style Cafe for a quick breakfast. But we'd have to be in Hawaii to do that. Ah, the memories...

By the way, bring cash if you go to the Hawaiian Style Cafe. They don't take credit cards, but they do have an ATM machine in the restaurant.

Thanks to accruing hundreds of thousands of Hilton Honors points over the past few years, we were able to stay at a couple Hilton properties for a number of free nights during our recent trip to Hawaii. The place we stayed at on the Big Island of Hawaii was the Hilton Waikoloa Village - an expansive 64-acre resort that featured a number of restaurants, bars and a lot of things to do for those who didn't want to leave the facility. We stayed there for the first six nights of our vacation in Hawaii.

Even though the address for the Hilton Waikoloa Village is listed as being in Waikoloa, but as far as I can tell there's no Waikoloa. It's actually near a small unincorporated village called Anaehoomulu (see map). There is a Waikoloa Village, HI, but it's about five miles up into the hills north and east of the area where the hotel is (see map). So you can see it can be pretty confusing if you don't know exactly where you're going.

The Hilton Waikoloa Village is part of a much larger complex of other resorts, villas and condos, golf courses and small shopping centers known as the Waikoloa Beach Resort. It was initially built a number of years ago on land that had been once part of the huge Parker Ranch, which was then licensed to the U.S. Navy as an artillery range and a training ground for Marines. After World War II, the Navy gave the land back to Parker Ranch, but had to clean up the land. One account I read said that a number of unexploded ordinances could still be buried under the land and a restricted area is fenced off south and east of where our hotel was.

In the 1980's, a Japanese development company, Nansay, came in and bought up parcels of land in the Hawaiian islands to develop into golf course resorts. Two of those parcels became the planned community of Waikoloa Village and the other was the Waikoloa Beach Resort area. One of the first resorts that was built and opened in 1988 was the present day Hilton Waikoloa Village. However, the original tenants of the property was the Hyatt corporation. Hilton took over the property about 15 years ago.

The land where the Hilton Waikoloa Village is on was once a marshy area embedded in the surrounding lava rock. I would have loved to have seen pictures before the land was developed. It's sort of interesting and strange at the same time that they were basically able to create this lush green oasis surrounded by this forbidding lava rock field.

The Hilton Waikoloa Village is segmented into three different hotel buildings - the Lagoon, the Palace and the Ocean. When I had made reservations last fall, my free points would only get us a room in the Palace building. But for $25 bucks a night, we could upgrade to the Ocean tower rooms for a more scenic view. (The Ocean tower is the building in the foreground that looks like three loops.) That was a no-brainer. And I purposely asked for a top floor room. While our room didn't give us a direct view of the ocean, I sort of liked our view better because we got a full view of the small bay, the ocean in the not-so-long-distance, and views of the top of Mauna Kea and the smaller, but closer, Hualalai dormant volcano. A bulk of the Hilton property was visible from our balcony, as well.

In doing some editing for this post, I just chopped about six paragraphs. I'm not even going to go into detail like I originally had regarding our arrival on the Big Island because re-reading the whole ordeal brought my blood to a boil.

After we landed at Kona around 9:30 local time (1:30 a.m. body-time), it's somewhat of an understatement to say we had some difficulty getting our rental car (due to a very stupid person in line in front of me) and getting to the hotel (a normal 20 minute drive from the airport took over an hour as the main road was closed due to a traffic accident). It was about 11:30 when we finally got our room keys.

After we checked in, we waited for the tram to take us to the Ocean tower. We learned as time went on that the trams were not the best option when it came to going to the Ocean tower which was the farthest building on the property from the lobby.

The trams they used at the Hilton Wiakoloa Village were designed in Switzerland and replaced the original trams that were in use since the property opened in the late 80's. They weren't fast, but were efficient. As I said, if you caught them right, they were good. If you had to wait, it was excruciating. We waited 15 minutes for a tram to show up that evening and it was midnight - 4:00 a.m. body-time - when we got into the room. We'd been up for 24 hours straight traveling to Hawaii. Ugh!

Also, the Hilton Waikoloa Village had a Disney-designed open-aired boat and canal system that ran between all the hotel buildings. The boats were powered, but they ran on an underwater track so they wouldn't bang into anything. It seemed to be a little more efficient than the tram and was sort of fun to ride. But it would fill up quickly and you could only get about 15 to 18 people on a boat. Cindy said the first time we rode the boat back to the room that it reminded her of the time she went to Disneyland and went on the "It's a Small World" ride. When I found out that it was the same type of boat system as what Disney had at Disneyland, each time Cindy would get on the boat she'd sing, "It's a small world, after all. It's a small world, after all..."

When we didn't make the tram or the boat - which was the vast majority of the time - we would walk through a series of corridors that contained millions of dollars of Asian, Polynesian and Hawaiian artwork including pottery, statues, paintings and even samples of indigenous clothing used by islanders. Actually, it was pretty cool. In addition to the art walk, there was a number of Hindu statues all over the resort grounds.

This is the large Buddha at Buddha Point on the far side of the hotel grounds. Buddha Point was a great place to watch the sunset and to see humpback whales off in the not-so-far distance during the early morning sunrise. This was one of Cindy's favorite places to go first thing in the morning before breakfast.

Speaking of breakfast, the Hilton Waikoloa Village featured five or six restaurants (depending upon what you classified as a restaurant) along with a handful of bars. The breakfast area was in a large room that featured a buffet, omelet bar and a number of cereals to choose from. Breakfast was a little expensive - $26.95 per person. But being a Hilton Honors Diamond member, we were able to get a $10 cut per person on breakfast making it a more palitable $16.95. And it was pretty good. The breakfast area was good for families, of which there seemed to be a lot of at the Hilton Waikoloa Village.

Actually, much of Hilton Waikoloa Village is geared toward families. We were sort of surprised by that, but then we really shouldn't have been. We usually stay away from places that have a family atmosphere because there's nothing better than some little kid throwing a temper tantrum at the table next to you while you're trying to eat - as what happened at breakfast one morning. Quite honestly, Cindy and I were amazed at the number of young families who had their pre-school kids with them at the resort. If I were a young father, the last thing I'd want to do is bring the kids to Hawaii with me.

One of the big things for families was the Dolphin pool. Actually, there's no dolphin shows as the dolphin pool at the Hilton Waikoloa Village is just a training facility for dolphins. The five salt water pools that hold the dolphins are fed directly by the Pacific Ocean. There are a team of biologists/trainers who work with the dolphins. I'm not certain what they do with the dolphins after their "trained". That was one question we forgot to ask a young - and enthusiastic - intern who came over to where we were standing watching the dolphins one afternoon. She was overly helpful in letting us know about the dolphins and the training they were going through. In fact, the Hilton had a program that would allow you to "swim" with the dolphins. We saw one of those sessions and it did look pretty interesting.

Thankfully, there were areas where you could get away from kids. One of which was the adult pool that was in a lagoon-type courtyard inside the Ocean tower. This is the view from outside the front door of our room looking down across the lagoon into the adult pool area. There was a bar with wait-staff service and it was a nice respite from the screaming little kids who were having fun in the water slide area on the other side of the building near the bay. And even though we didn't try it, the bar area also had their own sushi bar. It was a popular place at night.

And the Hilton was also "gay-friendly" - which is pretty much the norm for the whole state of Hawaii. The night we arrived, we immediately saw a couple of gay males nuzzling each other on one of the benches waiting for the tram. The next morning, we shared our tram car with an elderly German man and his younger black partner. Nice guys, but they made for a interesting couple. Not that there's anything wrong with gay people - we have neighbors who are gay and they're great guys. But it would be a little difficult to explain to your five-year-old son why those two men were holding hands as they looked at the artwork in the corridors.

Talking about bars again, they had the Malolo Lounge (Malolo is a volcanic island near Fiji) just off the open-air lobby at the hotel. After a long day on the road out exploring parts of the Big Island, we wandered into the bar for a snack and a mai tai. Our waitress, April, was a young native woman and she was great to talk with about the culture, the happenings and what was going on around the hotel. She confessed that business had been pretty slow lately - the hotel during our visit may have been one-third occupancy - but she was hoping things would pick up soon. She said, "Some of the regulars that would visit us every year haven't been here for a couple years now." She did say more corporations were having retreats or conferences at the hotel, however. She said a big one with over 700 people was going to be starting that weekend.

Cindy asked April about the lu'au the hotel put on. April told us that they used to do the lu'au four times a week. Now they only do it twice a week (Tuesday and Friday nights). She said her husband used to be in charge of some aspects of the lu'au, but they had to do some cutbacks and he had to find another job. She said, "Now we share the same musicians and entertainers with the Marriott next door. So if you miss a lu'au here some night, you can just go next door to the Marriott and see it on Wednesday or Saturday night."

Also, the concierges at the hotel were wonderful with us, as well. Each tower had their own concierges and the first night we met the afternoon and evening concierge, Rick, who was just great with us. We told him that we knew their object was to keep people on the property, but we were the adventurous types who liked to try the local fare. He was overly helpful with his suggestions. And each of them were spot on good.

All in all, the Hilton Waikoloa Village was a nice place to spend some time while we were on vacation. We weren't in the rooms all that much, but the decor was very nice, the beds were comfy and the room was sort of big. And the staff all treated us extremely well during our visit. The only downside I'd have to say is the place can get overrun with children and it's sometime difficult to find a quiet area to enjoy a book or to take a nap by the ocean. The grounds are beautiful and well-maintained. There were exotic birds in the lobby and in the lagoon area of the Ocean tower. They had a number of places to shop at on the property. They had a spa. But like a lot of Hawaii, nearly everything involved with the hotel is expensive. The room we stayed in would normally run about $429 a night. And our incidentals (breakfast, bar tabs, other charges) came to an additional $700 bucks over six days. Like I said, it was very nice, but there's no way we'd be able to afford to stay there had we not had the free points.

Before we decided to go to Hawaii, we were torn whether to go to the Big Island of Hawaii or to Maui. We talked to some friends and family who had been to Hawaii in the past and there wasn't really a consensus as to which island was better to visit. Cindy finally said, "Well, if we're going for a couple weeks, can't we go to both islands?" So, that solved the "Which island should we go to?" dilemma.

I was interested in going to the Big Island purely because of the diverse terrain and climates they have on the island. 11 of the Earth's 13 micro-climates can be found on Hawaii. They have a desert on the south part of the island, a rain forest on the eastern side, there's a temperate zone in the hills on the north side of the island, a segment of the western part of the island gets 350 days of sunshine a year. And on the top of Mauna Kea, a good portion of the year it's a tundra covered in snow.

Our hotel was about 20 miles up the coast from Kailua Kona in the sun-drenched Kohala Coast. It was rather interesting driving up into the hill area around Waimea and experiencing a 15 degree drop in temperature during the day. One day, it was sunny and 84 when we left our hotel and 20 minutes later when we pulled into Waimea it was still sunny, but 69 degrees. One evening, it was 59 and raining in Waimea. When we got to our hotel about 15 miles away down by the coast, it was clear overhead and 77 degrees.

That evening also marked the first time I'd ever seen a moonlight rainbow, or a "moonbow". As we were walking out to the car, it was raining overhead. However, the full moon was creeping above the clouds to the east. As I looked off toward the clear skies over the western coast of the island, I saw this faint white bow in the sky. As we got out of Waimea and started down the mountain, I had to pull over and see if my eyes were deceiving me. Sure enough, it was a moonbow. And reading up on moonbow's later on, we found out how fortunate we were to see one. The conditions have to be just right - full or nearly full moon, not more than 40 degrees above the horizon, with the person in between the moon at their back and the rain. We tried to get a picture of it, but it was so faint that we really couldn't capture it on Cindy's little point-and-shoot digital camera. Turns out that we really needed a time lapse picture to make it come out. We had a tripod, but we didn't have our good digital camera that has that capability. It was back in the room.

While the western part of the island gets only about 15 inches of annual rainfall, Hilo, on the eastern side, gets about 130 inches of rain a year. Some areas up about 2500 to 3000 feet on the island have recorded over 300 inches of precipitation in a year. While you would think Hilo and a good portion of the high precipitation areas on Hawaii would be outrageously humid, the prevailing winds on the windward side of the island act as a natural air-conditioner. Temperatures in the 90's are very rare on Hawaii. The highest temperature on record in Hilo is 94 degrees, set back in 1966.

The area around our hotel was an interesting mix of greenspace and black lava rock that went right down to the ocean. The black lava, understandably, could turn very hot under the warm sun, driving up surrounding temperatures into the mid-80's during the heat of the day. However, away from the lava rock, south of Kailua Kona, temperatures would be in the mid to upper 70's. You could easily drive 30 minutes in any direction and experience three to four distinctive types of weather on Hawaii.

One of the more interesting aspects of the black lava rock on the west side of Hawaii was how the locals used white pumice stones to make their own graffiti on the black lava. All along the highway north and south of our hotel, you'd see these little messages, memorials or odes of love spelled out with white stone on the black lava. It was actually kind of neat to see and realizing that you didn't have to use paint to get your message out in the open.

The Kilauea volcano on the south side of the island is still active and is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. Lava flows and sulfuric gases emanating from fissures in the earth are quite common. However, during our trip to Hawaii, the lava flows were minimal and to see them you had to walk quite a long way on the lava rock. And lava rock isn't fun to walk on unless you have some pretty heavy duty hiking boots. Or, you could take a helicopter for a bird's-eye view of the flows at night. But according to some locals we talked to, it wasn't really worth the nearly 100 mile drive to the volcano, considering most of what we would see down there was the same thing we were seeing as we drove along the highway either north or south of our hotel, minus the sulfuric smell.

Hawaii is also a hazy island, primarily due to a phenomenon known as "vog", or "volcanic fog". It's a combination of the sulfur dioxide coming from the volcanic fissures reacting with sunlight, oxygen and moisture in the atmosphere. Not only does vog make things pretty hazy at times, it can cause respiratory and flu-like symptoms in some people. People with high blood pressure, who have difficulty breathing after walking a short distance and children are advised to stay clear of areas of high vog. Thankfully, the vog dissipates during the evening hours leading to some spectacular star watching. But it also does help with some stunning sunsets on the island, too.

There are five volcanic regions on Hawaii - actually six, if you count the active Loihi volcano that is underwater just off the southern coast of the Big Island. Scientists believe that in 250,000 years the Loihi volcano will push up and create the ninth main Hawaiian Island. Three of the volcanoes on Hawaii are dormant or extinct, but Mauna Loa and Kilauea continue to have the capabilities of a major eruption at any time.

One of the best places on the earth to see out into space is on the summit of Mauna Kea - which is Hawaiian for "white mountain". As I said, Mauna Kea usually has snow on its top, but due to an exceptional drought they're experiencing this year all across Hawaii the mountain top is clear of snow. Earlier this winter, 49 of the 50 states had one day where there was measurable snow on the ground. The only state that didn't was Hawaii. And that was highly unusual for Mauna Kea.

There are a total of 13 observatories on the summit of Mauna Kea. The weather conditions at the top of the 13,803 foot dormant volcano are tremendous for star watching. The atmosphere around the mountain has an inversion layer that allows the summit to stay well above the vog or other clouds that can envelope the slopes. The skies are crystal clear nearly 300 nights a year. And the island of Hawaii has a law that limits the amount of light pollution that can be projected into the sky. The observatories are closed to the general public, but tours to the summit can be arranged through the Mauna Kea Visitor Information Center. They're usually nighttime tours that take about three hours. But you need to have heavy clothes (it's cold up there) and I wasn't too excited about getting cold on a vacation to Hawaii.

The summit and observatories on Mauna Kea were visible some days from the balcony of our hotel. To our south, the dormant Hualalaivolcano was very visible each morning before the vog began to take over. It provided a wonderful view nearly every morning we woke up.

If you remember your days in school when the teacher talked about how Captain James Cook discovered the Hawaiian Islands in 1779, this is the spot where Cook first came ashore - Kealakekua Bay. Cook was taken in by the Hawaiian natives and treated almost like a deity. Cook and his two ships left the bay after a couple weeks, but a storm caused damage to one of the ships and they had to go back to Kealakekua Bay for repairs. Upon his arrival back to the bay, the natives thought that since Cook's ships were not able to weather the storm that maybe he duped them into thinking he was a god. An ensuing struggle took place not far from where Cook first set foot on Hawaii, and he was struck on the head and stabbed. There's a memorial on the north end of the bay that we didn't go to that is actually deeded to the United Kingdom. The 25 foot white obelisk commemorates Cook's landing and his subsequent death in the Hawaiian Islands. After his death, Cook maintained a status among the natives that was usually only shown toward kings. The small town of Captain Cook is located just up the mountain from the bay.

All in all, the Big Island was a dichotomy of tradition and modern, primitive and elegance, cold and warmth. Portions of the island were like the "land that time forgot". Other parts were majestic and elegant. There's a large movement among the natives to preserve the natural beauty of the island and to slow down modern developments on some places of the island. While Hawaii tries to maintain a perfect balance between traditional culture and modernistic offerings, the bottom line is that tourism drives the economy of the state. And even the most fervent traditionalists are resigned to that fact. They have to move forward to keep Hawaii's economy from falling into the sea.

Since we've been back from Hawaii for a week or so, most people haven't really asked about how our trip was as much as they've asked about our experience of dealing with the tsunami warning due to the devastating 8.8 earthquake in Chile during our first weekend on the Big Island. I was reluctant about writing about it as even though it was sort of exciting at the time, the outcome turned out to be very anti-climactic. I really didn't know how I could make it interesting because there was all this tension and excitement, but it fizzled like a dry fart at the end. My sister said, "Oh, I'm sure you'll be able to make it interesting enough. I want to hear all the details. Not many people have gone through a tsunami warning."

Hawaii has been hit by some devastating tsunami's over the years. One of the most famous happened 50 years ago when a tsunami that was generated by an earthquake in the Aleutian Islands hit Hilo. There was adequate warning about the initial wave and most people were able to get to higher ground when it hit. However, when the wave receded, a number of townspeople gathered along the shore and in the downtown area to view the damage. A secondary swell came ashore and swept 61 people to their death. There's a memorial museum in Hilo - the Pacific Tsunami Museum - that commemorates that tsunami and others that have hit the Hawaiian Islands.

On April 1, 1946, another tsunami was generated by an earthquake in the same Aleutian Island area that spawned the Hilo tsunami 14 years later. Unfortunately, because of the day - April Fools Day - a number of people who heard the warnings of a tsunami thought it was a prank so they didn't heed the warnings. Unfortunately, a number of children at a school/day care center north of Hilo were swept away by the tsunami. Cindy and I just happened to visit this place on a day trip to Hilo. They have a memorial on the former site of the school that commemorates those children and teachers who lost their lives that day. One family lost five children.

So they take their tsunami's rather seriously in Hawaii. And this one was no exception.

I first heard about the earthquake in Chile when I turned on the TV when we got back to our hotel room at the Hilton Waikoloa Village after dinner on Friday evening. There was some mention of a possible tsunami and that was something they were going to monitor overnight. What was sort of ironic is that during our first trips around the Big Island, we would see the signs like what are at the top of this post. We sort of chuckled because of the somewhat comical nature of the signs. But we just never - ever - figured that we'd have to worry about a tsunami while we were in Hawaii.

The next morning, Cindy got up before sunrise to take our camera out to Buddha Point - a slab of land that stuck out into the ocean on our hotel resort's property. You could very easily see humpback whales surfacing and frolicking just off the coast. Cindy thought that was so cool and she wanted to get some pictures.

While she was out doing that, I woke up and turned on the TV just after 7 a.m. Each of the local stations on the television were having non-stop tsunami coverage. Now, we were on the Big Island of Hawaii and there are really no local television stations on the island. The local television stations for the whole state of Hawaii are based in Honolulu on Oahu. And to make matters even more confusing, three of the six local television stations - KGMB-TV, KHNL-TV and KFVE-TV - share local newscasts. So I could turn to any one of three stations and get the exact same information.

I could tell right away that my plans for the day would be altered by Mother Nature. My plans consisted of going up to a small village up the coast to have breakfast at a place that was recommended to us, then coming back to the hotel, grabbing a lounge chair by the ocean and reading one of the books I brought with me on vacation. They even had wait staff service who would bring you drinks or beers. I already had it planned out - a mai tai right off the bat, then a series of Kona Big Wave Golden Ales. I was on vacation and ready to "veg" out for the day.

The first reports coming in said that, overnight, buoys out in the Pacific between Chile and the Hawaiian Islands were reporting some massive swells. Some were reported as high as 9 meters (just under 30 feet). That's a big swell in any stretch of the imagination. Initially, they had the state of Hawaii under a tsunami watch, meaning that there could be a chance of some massive waves hitting the islands.

As tsunami waves fan out, they can level out and that's what forecasters at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centeroutside of Honolulu were predicting would happen. Forecasts of waves as high as 9 to 12 feet were to hit the Hilo area on the east side of the Big Island around 11 a.m. on Saturday morning. Suddenly, the tsunami watch became a tsunami warning.

About the time the local stations were beginning to announce a tsunami warning, Cindy came walking back into the room. I said, "Listen, I don't want to alarm you, but I guess there's a tsunami warning for the islands."

Well, I shouldn't have said anything because she immediately began to panic. "What's going on? When did this happen? What are we going to do? Do we have to get out of here? What do we pack?"

I explained to her that not only were we on the far side of the island, we were on the sixth floor of the hotel and that the hotel was built up on the lava rock base by about 15 feet above the ocean. But they kept talking on the local channels that all low lying areas around the Hawaiian Islands would have to be evacuated. I was sort of perplexed with all that as we were on the west side of the island and the waves were coming from the south and east. An expert on one of the local channels then spelled it out for me.

The Hawaiian Islands are all volcanic based land forms. When a tsunami hits one side of the island, the ensuing swells wrap around the islands because of the conical shape of the volcanoes whose base is well under the ocean. The expert said that the devastating waves can hit the east and south side of the islands, but the swells will envelope the rest of the shorelines around the islands due to the lack of a continental shelf on or near the islands. Hmm... OK. Well, it's gonna affect us, then.

By this time, the alarm system for the hotel is going off and the "message" light on our phone lights up. I call up the voice mailbox and the hotel has a recorded announcement alerting their guests that a tsunami warning has been issued and that everyone should evacuate the property. Well, I still didn't see any sense of urgency, considering we still had over 3 hours before the first wave hit Hilo. Besides, I was thinking it would be kind of cool to watch it come in from our balcony.

Cindy was still somewhat frantic, but I assured her that we'd have time to take showers, get dressed, grab what we needed for the day and go if we wanted. They were saying on TV that a large tsunami could have wicked swells for up to 10 hours after the first wave hits. That said, I was thinking that if the tsunami was even going to be 9 to 12 feet, it could be well after 8 p.m. before everything would settle down.

In the meantime, reports out of Hilo and Honolulu said that gas stations had begun to run out of gas, grocery stores were running out of food, and roads were clogged with evacuees. Cindy had settled down quite a bit and was even wondering if we could still get some breakfast at the hotel. I called to the breakfast restaurant at the hotel and the lady who answered the phone said it was closed. She said, "Everything in the hotel is now closed for the tsunami."

Well, I was thinking there was an outside chance we'd be able to stay. But with everything at the hotel closed, I thought I'd better ask if this was a mandatory evacuation. She said, "Oh, yes, sir. Everyone must evacuate the property."

I turned to Cindy and I said, "Well, now they're saying it's a mandatory evacuation. I guess we have to leave for sure, now."

Not long after that, the hotel's alarm goes off again. This time the message on the voice mail said that everyone MUST evacuate the property. In fact, as we left around 9:30, security details were going room to room making sure everyone was out, then programming the electronic locks on the doors so that people (or enterprising thieves) couldn't gain access to the rooms.

Before we left, I was getting e-mails and text messages from people who knew we are out in Hawaii wanting to know if we're safe. I decided to sit down and send out an e-mail to friends and family letting them know of the situation before we left.

The tram that went between our building and the main lobby was waiting for us as we got down to the ground floor. A hotel employee was telling people that they were going to evacuate people to an off-site area that would be safe in the event of a tsunami. Cindy said, "Do we have to do that?"

I said, "I'm not gonna be stuck in someplace with a bunch of strangers. No, we can drive up to Waimea."

Waimeais a quaint little ranching town of about 7,000 people in the "hills" region of northern Hawaii island (see map). Actually, it sort of reminded me of some of the small towns we encountered years ago when we traveled Northern California's wine region. It is also known as Kameula (the Hawaiian name for "Samuel", named after the father of John Parker, the first rancher in the area) and it's shown as that on some maps. However, the maps I bought out in Hawaii showed it as Waimea and all the towns signet and the locals called it Waimea. The town is about a 15 mile drive from our hotel and it sits just over 2500 feet in elevation. I figured that we'd have no problem up there.

As we left the hotel, I was sort of surprised by the lack of traffic. I guessed that we were probably part of the last stragglers getting away from the low-lying areas. We drove up to Waimea with no problem. However, when we got to town, it turned out that we weren't the only people who thought getting away to Waimea was a good idea. Turned out we were going to be surrounded by a lot of strangers where ever we went that day.

The main roads through town were packed. People were parking where they could and local officials opened up the school's soccer field for overflow parking. We were able to park along the main road into Waimea near where we wanted to eat breakfast. The place - Hawaiian Style Cafe - we had breakfast at three days prior on our way to Hilo. It's a great little place and the food was excellent. Be sure to look for my entry on the place in coming days.

It was a 45 minute wait - minimum - before we could get in. We decided to put our name in, then go across the street to a number of little shops that were teeming with evacuees. Cindy looked around at some of the shops while I returned e-mails, text messages and took phone calls from people back on the mainland wanting to know what was going on. There was wireless internet available in the shopping area and number of people were on line with their laptops keeping up with information.

Before we left for Hawaii, Cindy chastised me for wanting to take my notebook computer with us. "You're just gonna sit on-line the whole time we're there," she said. I promised her I wouldn't. (And I didn't - other than trying to find places to eat or go see.) However, when we were in Waimea and seeing all the people with their laptops getting information on the tsunami, her tone was completely different.

"Why didn't you bring your lap top with us," she asked.

I said, "Geez, Cindy! You didn't want me to bring the thing with us to Hawaii. Now you're wondering why I didn't bring it with us to Waimea!" I couldn't win...

After about a half-hour, I went back across the street and checked on our status. It would be about 10 minutes before we could get in, so I went back and told Cindy we needed to go back to the restaurant. If we weren't there when our names got called, we'd lose our place in line. And the line was still growing by 10:30.

In the meantime, forecasters at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center on Oahu had pushed back the time the first wave was to hit the island to about 11:30. A buoy about 100 miles south and east of Hilo reported another large swell of 9 meters just before 11 a.m. Oh, man. This was gonna be a big one, we thought.

We finally got into Hawaiian Style Cafe around 10:45 a.m. We sat at the counter and ordered up our food. Seated next to us was a couple from the north suburbs of Chicago. They, too, had to get out of their hotel which happened to be the Marriott hotel next to our hotel in the Waikoloa Village resort area. Cindy asked them what procedures that hotel went through and the guy said, "They came around to each of the rooms and told people that they needed to leave the property. They said they had an area where people could go to if they didn't have transportation out of the facility. I asked, 'Can we leave if we have a car?' They said, 'Sure!' In fact, I think that's what they were hoping that most of the people would do."

But before they left, they were asked to fill up their tub with water. "They told us that if the water system went out, that would be the only fresh water we'd have."

I said, "Well, they certainly didn't tell us to do that at our hotel!"

After we finished breakfast, it was getting close to the time the first wave was supposed to hit Hilo. I got back into the car and turned on the Hilo radio station I was listening to on our way up to Waimea. It was off the air. I thought, "Uh oh. That's not good."

Information around Waimea was sporadic as to what was happening. I ended up calling my friend, Scott Schroeder, back in the Quad Cities to find out if he knew of anything. (How strange is that? I had to call back 4000 miles to find out what it was going on in Hawaii.) Scott said that he was watching a stream of KITV out of Honolulu and he said, "Well, I don't think anything has happened. The time frame for the first waves to hit the island has passed, and they're not getting any reports of any big waves."

Cindy and I ended up going to a farmer's market in Waimea to pass the time. As we were looking at the different booths, reports started coming in that the tidal wave was not much of a big deal. It was close to 12:30 p.m. when we started to hear the same thing from different people. Hilo was still there, no big waves have hit the island and it appeared the tsunami threat had passed.

We drove around Waimea for a bit listening to a couple people talk about the situation on a Hawaiian public radio station - mainly because we couldn't get any information from any other station. They were all playing music like it was a normal day in paradise. The two people on the station were sort of confused by what was going on. They were getting reports that the largest wave to hit Hilo was about 2.8 feet - considerably less than the 9 to 12 foot waves predicted by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. They said that there was no information from Hawaii Civil Defense or from any of the law agencies regarding whether or not the danger had passed. The tsunami warning, as far as they knew, was still in effect.

I said to Cindy, "This is ridiculous. Nothing's happened. Let's go back down to the hotel to see if we can get back in."

As we drove down out of the hills, we came to the intersection that would take us back down to our hotel. Police had the road to the little village we were going to go to earlier in the day still closed off. But the main highway south toward our hotel was open.

When we got to the entrance of the hotel, police still had the entrance blocked off. Dozens of cars were lined up along both sides of the road waiting to get back in. We decided to drive down the road about six miles to a scenic overlook to wait out the time.

The parking lot of the scenic overlook was full of cars and we were able to squeeze into a spot. We got out and sat on a stone wall that overlooked the black lava fields and out into the Pacific Ocean. A local family had a boom box playing music. It was sort of a party atmosphere in the parking lot.

Suddenly at 1:45, people began to pack up their things, got in their cars or trucks and drove off. I said, "Hmm... Maybe those people know something that we don't know..." Cindy suggested we get back into the car and drive back to the hotel. Sure enough, when we got to the entrance by the highway, the barricades were down and the cops were gone. We drove onto the property and went to the hotel.

As we were driving near the hotel, the guy on the public radio station came on and said the tsunami warning was rescinded at 1:38 p.m. Everything was slowly getting back to normal.

By the time we got to the hotel, valet parking was a madhouse. All these people were coming back and they had a skeleton crew of people working at the hotel. They just told us to leave our car and they'd deal with it later.

The tram wasn't working, so we walked back to our room - about a 10 minute walk from the lobby. When we got up to our floor, the hotel's security staff was going around and reprogramming the doors to allow people to get back into their rooms. We tried our door and got right in. I went out on the balcony, checked to see what was going on out near the ocean and Cindy said, "Well, I'm gonna change into my bathing suit and head outside."

I sent a quick e-mail out to friends and family letting them know that we were safely back at the hotel and the tsunami warning was canceled. We went out and found a double lounge chair. I got comfy and began to read my book. The only problem is that the bar was closed - the hotel sent a lot of people home thinking this was going to be a massive tidal wave and getting them to come back proved to be quite a chore.

And that was it. I told you it was pretty anti-climactic. Here's a picture of the cover of the West Hawaii Today newspaper on Sunday morning that talked about the tsunami that wasn't, with an accompanying article talking about how they evacuated 1500 people from our hotel. I didn't think they had even half that amount of people on the property, to tell you the truth. All in all, I think they overly erred on the side of caution in regard to this tsunami. But as I said earlier, Hawaiians remember some big ones in the past and they count themselves as lucky this time.

Cindy and I just returned from a nearly two week trip to Hawaii - the first time both of us had been to the Hawaiian Islands. I had saved up years and years of American Airlines and Hilton Honorspoints that I'd accrued from being on the road for my work. I have to thank my boss, Daniel, who allowed me to keep my points rather than turn them into the company as I've heard other companies will do with their employee's frequent flyer or frequent stay accounts. But he feels it's a great perk for his guys who put in a lot of time on the road.

Last summer, I got a letter from American Airlines that stated I'd lose over half my points if I didn't use them by October of 2010. Cindy and I had always talked about going to Hawaii using my points, but we just didn't know when. American Airlines forced my hand to make a decision for us to go sooner than later.

We couldn't go last year as I'd used up my vacation time due to my hip replacements and our trip to Savannah and Hilton Head last May. And the earliest I could get away from work for a vacation was going to be in late February. Before we were able to book the trip, Cindy had to see if she could get a couple weeks off during late February and early March. Her workplace was able to accommodate her request and I booked our flights and nights in Hawaii last fall.

We got into Kona at 9:20 p.m., Hawaiian Standard Time - 1:20 a.m. Central Standard Time. By the time we got our rental car and had to take a detour to our hotel - it was 52 miles of mainly mountainous roads instead of the flat, direct 17 miles for the detour due to a traffic accident that had closed the main road to our hotel - it was 11:30 p.m. By the time we got to our room thanks to a slow tram at our hotel, it was midnight. That was 4 a.m. back home - or the same time we got up to start our journey to Hawaii the day before.

Coming back was even more brutal. We had taken Hawaiian Airlines up to Maui - a great airline, by the way. I wish more airlines on the mainland worked with the same efficiency, accessibility and friendliness - as well as having great planes with a lot of room - as Hawaiian Airlines. Coming back, we had to fly from Maui to Honolulu - endure a 35 minute layover - and then fly on to Kona. We had to get our bags from Hawaiian and then truck them over to the American Airlines counter. We had a little over a two hour layover at Kona before taking off after 11 p.m. local time (3 a.m. back home). We got into LAX around 6 a.m. local time there and had a 7:05 a.m. flight to Chicago. Our layover in Chicago was only supposed to be 90 minutes, but the pilot who was supposed to fly our plane to Moline called in sick. So, we had to wait for 30 minutes PAST our scheduled departure time before a pilot showed up and flew us home. From the time we left Maui to the time we unlocked our door, it was a shade over 18 hours.

We had gotten up at 6:30 local time the day (Saturday) we left (10:30 a.m. back home). When we got to bed on Sunday night at 9:30 p.m. (5:30 p.m Hawaiian time). My math isn't too good, but I figure I was up for 35 hours because I just don't sleep on planes. And American Airlines planes are not comfortable whether they be for a short or a long haul. After this trip, I won't be flying American all that much any longer. I'm starting to accrue points on United now, primarily because they have more direct and convenient flights out of the Quad Cities than what American has. And they've sort of turned into the lesser of all evils when it comes to air travel for me.

In addition to the free flights and free rooms, we used some savings we'd built up and had a pretty good tax return this year. It was the only way we were able to pull off the trip to Hawaii. And it was probably the only way we could have done it, so we looked at this as a once in a lifetime trip. If you've never been to Hawaii, here's a tip - make sure you have a shitload of cash or a lot of room on your credit card. The place ain't cheap. The cheapest price we found on a gallon of milk was $8.49. The cheapest gas was $3.77 a gallon. Beer was a minimum $8.99 a six pack - and that was for domestic American beers. Cindy remarked more than once that she thought it was completely wrong that a gallon of milk was more expensive than a pack of cigarettes. We're not smokers, but even we knew that $6.99 for a pack of cigarettes was pretty high.

We went at a pretty good time. We've had a brutal winter in Middle America. I figured that if we went at the end of February, we'd be sick of winter (we were), and that the weather would moderate by the time we got back. I wasn't too far off. It was 18 degrees when we left and we had six to eight inches of snow on the ground. When we got back, the majority of the snow had melted - save for the drift piles, snow in shaded areas and along fence rows - and the temps had been in the 30's and 40's while we were gone. Temps later this week are supposed to reach close to or into the 50's. So, the timing for weather was good.

It was sunny to partly sunny nearly every day we were in Hawaii. Temperatures ranged from the upper 70's to lower 80's, but they would drop into the low 60's if you went up in elevation. The only rain we ran into was on the windward side of the islands on a couple of occasions. We took the precaution to tan at a tanning salon for a couple weeks before we left, but we still needed sunscreen while in Hawaii because the sun is pretty much right overhead year round. We burned a couple times, but aloe vera and skin lotion took the burn and the sting away pretty much overnight. She's pretty fair-skinned, so it's actually the darkest Cindy has been since, well, probably since we've been together.

About the only problem with the weather had to do with the wind. A strong high pressure system sat north and east of the islands for a full week pushing some heavy winds on shore. I thought high pressure systems were supposed to mean good and tranquil weather, but they must mean something else around Hawaii. Although the temperatures stayed warm, the wind for the last full week we were in Hawaii blew from 15 to 25 miles an hour sustained primarily out of the northeast with gusts of as much as 50 miles an hour at times, especially overnight. We were told that Hawaii is usually a breezy place, but even the natives were amazed at the prolonged strength of the wind.

Also, in regard to timing, late February and early March is the prime time for Humpback Whale watching off the west coasts of the big island of Hawaii and Maui - the two islands we were going to visit. We were able to see the whales from our hotel rooms and we took a two-hour excursion while we were on Maui to see the humpback whales up close.

While on both Hawaii and Maui, we were able to take in a lot of the local culture and restaurants. Everything from the seafood to fruit was so fresh that it we had some of the most memorable meals ever. Cattle ranching is big on Hawaii and Maui, so the grass-fed beef was pretty good, too. Breakfasts are big in Hawaii and we visited a number of spots that served some great morning food.

We had rental cars on both islands - a Mustangconvertible that had a 4-cylinder engine that was a real dog; and a Toyota Camry that Cindy was scared to ride in until I convinced her that Hertz was too big of a company to allow a car that hadn't been fully checked over for defects to leave their lots. We drove over 660 miles on the Big Island and 399.9 miles on Maui (I checked the odometer when I turned in the car). My idea of a vacation is to lounge around the pool or a beach reading a book. But Cindy had read about all these great and beautiful drives on Hawaii and Maui that we had to check out. The last thing a guy like me who drives for a living wants to do is drive during our vacations. Sometimes the drives were out of necessity since our hotels were sort of out of the way, but more often than not it was for pleasure and exploring. And we do like to explore while we're on vacation.

Hawaii, as a whole, is not without its problems. Tourism is down significantly. Tourism figures from 2009 vs. 2008 showed that people visiting the island was down 5% and those people who came spent 10% less money than the year before. Believe me, we helped make up a good portion of that spending deficit.

Hawaii is mired in an El Nino-induced drought. We expected to see a lot of lush tropical plants and flowers along side fast running mountain-fed streams and waterfalls that filled huge pools of clear, cool water to jump into. They just weren't there. One resident on Maui told us that it's been the worst drought conditions in 30 years. High fire danger signs were prevalent throughout both islands - even on the windward sides which usually have high rain totals. On the leeward sides of the islands - the western sides of Hawaii and Maui - if it wasn't watered by an irrigation or sprinkling system, it was brown. There were even leaves on some hardwood trees that were turning color like it was fall.

Drug problems are heightened on the islands, as well. We were told there is a large methamphetamine problem on the islands. There were a lot of public service announcements on local radio and televisions stations which had teenaged kids talking about being hooked on meth at an early age and warning against starting at any age.

And the days of "Maui Wowie" marijuana are over as the local and federal governments have enacted an aggressive campaign in finding and destroying marijuana fields on the island. In fact, the state of Hawaii has a "zero tolerance" policy against people who grow marijuana on their property. We heard of a tough story of a young mother who owned land on the north side of Maui who was arrested for having pot plants on her property. She claims she didn't know they were there. They were found by authorities in a heavily overgrown area on the edge of her property, completely inaccessible from her house. However, there was a foot path on the back side of the property up from a dirt road that went to the marijuana patch, probably made by the people who planted the pot on the property. She has three young kids, no history of trouble, no drug paraphernalia or even a hint of a holding area for the pot on her property. However, we were told the state was trying to take away her property because the marijuana was growing on her land. Evidently, a high-profile attorney has taken her case on a pro-bono basis.

We fell in love with contemporary Hawaiian music, I fell in love with a new beer I found - Kona Brewing Company's Big Wave Golden Ale, and Cindy fell in love with the Hawaiian Springs brand of bottled water. A lot of people will say water is water, but I have to admit that for some reason the Hawaiian Springs water had to be the best tasting bottled water I've ever had. And we were introduced to Kalua pork - basically a pork shoulder that is wrapped in indigenous leaves and cooked at a slow pace over lava rock underneath the surface. It was damn tasty.

So, look for our reports of restaurants, scenic drives, destinations and other (what I think are) interesting details on our trip to Hawaii. I'll be sure to fill you in on the circumstances of being evacuated from our hotel for a possible tsunami that was to possibly occur after the recent devastating earthquake in Chile. That was sort of exciting and rather stupid at the same time. We ate some great food, saw some great sights and enjoyed the hell out of Hawaii.

Two things we DIDN'T do while we were in Hawaii -

1) We didn't go to a luau. This was a bone of contention before Cindy and I left for Hawaii. I had read about and heard about luau's from people who attended them in the past. The overwhelming consensus was that luau's are sort of fun, but the food sucks. And they're high-priced. After mildly arguing with Cindy that I really didn't want to do a luau based on the reports I'd gathered, she finally called my two oldest sisters who have both been to Hawaii and been to luau's. One sister said, "Oh, God, Will would hate it!" The other sister said, "It's like going to the state fair and sitting at long tables with a bunch of people you don't know." Cindy finally capitulated and we're glad we didn't go.

2) We didn't go visit the Hawaii Volcanoes National Parkon the Big Island. We were less than 30 miles away one day during a day trip, but it was getting later on and we didn't really have the proper footwear to go walk over the black lava. When we got to talking to some people later on about going to see Mauna Loa, we were told that the lava flow was minimal and you could only really see it at night and that was only after a long hike. Besides, most of the island of Hawaii is landscaped with black lava rock - especially around the resort we stayed at. We were told that basically what we were looking at on and around the resort would be the same thing we'd have to drive about 90 miles to see - only with some pockets of sulfur-smelling "vog" emanating from fissures in the rocks.

We liked Hawaii so much that we immediately said we'd like to go back at some point. But unless we hit the lottery, or I find a job that pays a minimum of $250,000 a year, we won't be able to stay at the places we stayed at, nor eat at many of the places we did on this trip. I like to tell people that everyone should be sentenced to visit Las Vegas for at least three days once in their life. However, I will add that everyone who has the chance and the means to do it - go to Hawaii for at least a week. It was just nani (Hawaiian for "beautiful").